Jude Loka Dili

Fingers of Time Jude Loka Dili

This is a range of collection of poems by me for a period close to two decades. I should say from onset that the intention was not to make a book. I found then (as much as I do now) convenience of expression through poetry. And it would be this way for a man of my temperament. I could find no other unhindered way to quickly relieve my burdens. And they were many, growing up in my part of the world. One title in this collection is "palm leaves silhouette" written in Akure, a town in Western part of Nigeria in 1990. I had just been deployed to national service in a remote town of Afo (later on to Idoani) in then Ondo state of Nigeria. Somewhere from the crowd within the camp ground a young man emerged and asked if I would like to teach his private school pupils. My social side liked the idea of staying in the city but my moral instincts rebelled violently. I mused over it for the greater part of the night and decided not to stay. That was the first of my many long nights. In my room at the guest house, I had unobstructed view of the garden. And it was a moonlight night. There was a palm tree in the garden and I watched it sway in the breeze for many hours of that night. I was waiting for the dawn to break the sad news to the proprietor. I could not go to sleep. So my only method to pass the time or wait for sleep was to count the movement of the leaves on a palm branch that was most visibly spread across the rays of moonlight that came to my window. It was indeed a long night and 'time was slender and slow'. More than that singular incident, time became a living matter to me especially in area of my faith. Now, I have questions about time and also about change; but especially how time affects change.