2020 2nd Place Winner - Fiyinfoluwa Timothy Oladipo, 'Sonnet to Palm Sunday'

FIYINFOLUWA TIMOTHY OLADIPO

Second Prize - 2020 Tower Poetry Competition, 'Trees'

Sonnet to Palm Sunday

You know it's Easter when all the plantain

Trees are dying. Black fronds burning without

Flame. Hasan with the Madam, sugarcane

Go do better in this our kind of drought.

Our backyard rippling with stillborn shoots, but

All we can quote is that one parable

Of the Sower.    In three years, they have come

To look like my father, roots like ankles

Buried deep in London's concrete, leaves curved

Like his spine domed over the Atlantic.

The grass is the shade of green we had bribed

A man with en route to church: a traffic

Warden with a gun the colour of palm

Fronds now being set aflame by Hasan.