'Bambi' by Damilare Popoola

Tonight, the face of the sky is the countenance of a mendicant—dark grey, bare, begging for honour—and the moon is a depthless well dug by cruel hands, adding to its disgrace.

And we—my cousins and i—are gathered around Bambi, my grandfather, listening to the stories he has to tell.

Bambi, blind as a stone, the vitality of his eyes burned away by the slow fires of senescence, tells stories with the wit & grace of a potter, as one aware of the transcendental meaning they hold.

His lips, pinched from the rolling of time, don’t take away their appeal in the slightest. On the contrary, they elevate their relevance.

For what better portal for ancient truths to shuttle between immaterial and material than a rim of flesh weathered by time?

And we are struck by a sense of need beyond the ordinary. Pupils dilated, fixated on Bambi, our ears perked in all their eagerness, listening to this frail bag of bones whose words seem to hold the essence of life.

Not even our Pastor Rafiki, that enlightened vicar of God, could inspire this level of awe in us.

 

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Damilare Popoola is a medical doctor and writer from Nigeria. He has keen interest in literature and its power to enlighten and transform the mind. In his nascent writing career, he has had works published in Writers' Space Africa. He tweets @paulomondml.