My Abesson Poem by Danladi Emmanuel Jatau

The poem is all about distance. Distance that kept the poet far away from his lover.

The poet to a gargantuan extent, expressed how terribly it was for him when distance kept him from seeing his lover at the very time he needed to do so - that can be seen in lines 8-13.

Lines 1-7 explains the state if the poet as he thought and imagined so many things about his lover.

Lines 1-3 really shows the confused state of the poem, for example, '...evil and danger, ' 'intimidation and fear, ' 'missing an Angel and distance, ' The comparisons are almost the same, but the poet was so confused that he found it very difficult to explain his actual moment.

Lines 14-16 gives us the reaction of the poet. It tells us how he reacted emotionally to the situation.

'Tears' in line 14 and 'cry' in line 16 does not really mean the fiscal, but rather, it entails the emotional reaction.

'Rain' in line 15 creates a mental picture of the dropping of tears and thus, becomes an excessive exaggeration (hyperbole) .

Lines 16-18 shows how worse the situation of the poet was. Despite all his agony, there was no one to listen to him (16) , no one to share his burden with (17) , no one to help him (18) .

Lines 19-20 gives us a clue on how he (the poet) suddenly became courageous at a point in time.

Line 21 is an assurance of love; love from his lover.

Lines 22-23 tells us two things.
1) The love, the poet have for his lover and
2) A description of his lover. The poet refers to his lover as an Angel in line 22 which depicts the extent of her beauty, tenderness, and meekness.

In line 23, the poet adopts a word from his lovers dialect - Abesson which means 'Love, ' - to name his lover.

The word 'Abesson' was adopted from a major dialect - Igon - in Nassarawa state (Lafia) Nigeria.