Lagos 

Here borders on the sea some few walk away.
Everywhere scents of the flagrance
of ripe banana and orange. 

You walk into the beach, you hear the waves lashing
and lapping the strand, but look closer, you see
hot and unrestrained passion of love and romance.  

Coconut pitched like umbrellas, shedding palmated shades
in soft laurel tint, carpeted overhead with sky with the blue
of the human eye, buttoned with a moonlike sun.

Unclothed nature fingerlings basking and bathing
with the gentlest and tenderest of light beams.
You feel like breathing. You won't know  

when you start to breathe, gently, very gently,
with eyes closed, with a nipple touch of a grin
arranging your face, and the fingers of the sea  

smooching your feet. Swelling mood fills you,
It fills your lungs; it fills your senses;
it seduces you as an aroused wind  

leaks your hairs; fondles your nape;
presses against your skin; enters your pores;
caresses your veins, your arteries --- your navel: 

it chokes you with ecstasy. You groan gently,
with mouth closed; very gently you open your eyes,
the sky kissing the lower belly of the sea.

© Oritsegbemi Emmanuel Jakpa/Ireland