DREAMS AFRAID TO FLY

by Gerry Sikazwe

We are products of a thought the thinker’s own

We are pottery from an idea the potter’s

But why don’t we ideas supreme birth?

Likeness, it is said, begets likeness

But why do we lack hope

We whose existence is the glittering evidence of hope

Faith that is a dream constructed from dust might roam the earth crawl, stand, walk and run the earth

Yet now that we are here we fear to attempt flying that it is impossible

But is not impossible a typed phrase a misspelling of “I can”?

And must we stay deceived

That our wings are merely blade-shaped settlings of dust

And soon as we flap them as if built of air to nothingness they’ll disappear?

We are dreams realized ideas enlivened with purpose to voyage across the African sky and beyond

Exploiting abysmal heights of worlds above

Mounting flags of our unstoppability

With bravery of savage bush fire And stubbornness of heartless sea storms.