To The Cave, And Beyond Poem by Victor Okey Nwatu

About three heartbeats ago,
from a geologic time view point,
we traced our steps to how the earth did grow,
gulping every story though some appear disjoint.
We adopted a meandering river flow,
as we moved from one, to the next joint.
Was the trip disappointing? No!
Like one sitting on a score board, it was on point.

After a little delay at the lodge,
in which Puppie and ‘mon ami' Adejare
dexteriously loaded the bus to a near-budge,
on that fateful, calm Sunday,
we hit the road with a speed surge
that resembled Mr. Hart's driving, in every way.
We picked up Accrapod, Mr. Otong and Prof, our Geologic Jude,
and the journey to the past went under way.

Rivers Choba, Forcados and Nun were admired,
as they wriggled their ways to the ocean.
And to the inquisitive souls that enquired,
Prof explained the fallout of their everlasting motion.
Mr. Biggs was visited as required.
And Mr Amadi drove to Auchi with sky-high devotion.

Yak Hotels lived up to its billing -
wasn't just an empty hype,
when Prof said its pleasure was with top sealing.
Smooth, like a laminar flow in a pipe.
Rooms and fridge, never ending in chilling.
Mattresses, describable in pleasure scale as ripe,
ripe enough to make an insomniac sleep willing.

As a connoisseur of repute,
of the nineteen and half inches ‘belle' fame,
the quality of the comestibles was hard to refute.
Yes! Yak Hotels' kitchen's got game.
Drove us to food addiction that was acute,
while we relished Miriam and Aisha's frame.
The last statement, few people can refute,
though my pen refuses to name names.

We flew by bus to Igarra, ,
in the ancient and senile Kiberian basement.
Started from the base to a point higher,
as we took rocks' strike and dip without relent.
Then Prof's words seared me like fire,
as he said of me what I knew he never meant.

The alluvial fans of the Anambra basin,
of which our OMATTA boys are up with hope,
stood steep and firm as we started logging.
And made it hard for the feeble to cope.
The safety man, Feslajid, came calling,
and held me like a taut rope,
when my foot gave way to ‘sliken sliding'
and I started to capitulate without hope.

There were numerous sights and sounds
from the lacustrine to the sandstone quarry at Ayoguri
Plots that grew in leaps and bounds,
forming some constantly fluxing story.
That continued in many repeating rounds,
till the Niger bank at Agenebode.
Accrapod almost did all of us astound,
While Prof added embellishments in a flurry.

The journey from Auchi was, in events, lacking.
To the approval of many worn-out hearts.
Same for the Okigwe town tracking,
except for the Bona Fide Hotels parts.
To speak of it, my pen is seriously slacking.
It doesn't intend to throw darts…

The journey to the cave, and beyond was fun.
though not a continuous run of fun.
But we achieved a feat unthinkable -
did 3.5bn years in a week and still remained stable.
This is just my personal poetic delivery,
not in any meant to be the field trip's summary.
Just a desire to break my depositional silence,
while brandishing my poetic license.