Like her name
she’s a dear gem
pearly smooth as the ivory
adorning the callosal elephant that rumble
her birthplace, Makumu near Kisumu
smack dab on the equator–
she was born there,

her blood pulses to the drums
of the Luhyia, Luo, Kisii, & Kikuyu–
–a girl of African soil
who once shaped its mud into dolls
sitting cross-legged speaking Swahili
with the children who were born there

whose heart knows ebony
as the hue of family and friends
questioning why she wasn’t too,
though she was and will be, beyond
the shallow veneer of civilization where
culture fails & only the child remains,
for the intervention displayed
the red-bloodedness of us all

Yesu found her early
in those high sugar-caned shamba-fields
where the Spirit frothed over among
African thatched huts – and prayers
billowed up like the smoke
from kitchen-hut cooking fires
boiling chai tea
Kenya, her home, is where
she placed her reliance on him
and was born a second time
because like her Swahili name, Lulu,
she is as priceless as the One
above this fading earth
who reaches down
to the African clay she
was born












3.9 10/10