The Road Beneath Our Feet Once, our ancestors walked barefoot on red clay roads,Burdened backs bent like wilted plantain leaves,Chains like iron vines wrapped their wrists,And the sun whispered secrets of a stolen tomorrow.
They rode donkeys through deserts of despair,
Hoofbeats like the drumbeats of mourning,
Crossing rivers thick with memory’s ghosts,
Where whispers of lost names curled in the wind.
But oh, the soul of Africa does not bow forever.
Even in the cotton fields of sorrow,
We learned to sow dreams in the marrow of time,
To mold shackles into golden anklets of defiance.
II. The Choice Before Us
Now, we stand at the crossroads of history,
Feet planted in the rich black earth of ancestors’ sweat,
One path trudging slow, the other soaring high—
A donkey’s plod, or an eagle’s defiant flight.
Shall we ride, sluggish in the comfort of old ways,
Worn saddles of compliance gripping our backs?
Or shall we spread wings forged in the storm,
And carve new winds where the sky was once denied?
The eagle does not ask for permission to rise.
It does not fear the weight of the wind.
It was born from the storm, baptized in lightning,
And so must we—children of dusk and dawn.
III. The Flight of Tomorrow
No more shall we kneel at the altars of hesitation.
We are the architects of a renaissance unseen,
Chiseling new legacies into the face of time,
Where history bows, not in chains, but in reverence.
We choose not the weary donkey’s gait,
But the bold flight of vision, unshackled and free,
Soaring past the ghosts of yesterday’s sorrow,
To a future where the sky has no master but the wind.
For the power of a choice is the power of destiny—
To walk, to ride, or to fly.
By : jide Adesina
Extract from Tales of Destiny
January, 2025
All rights reserved
