Write a poem for father without hyperboles.
Good deeds need no embellishments.
Someone asked, who is your father?
I responded, father is a synonym for sacrificial giving.
Sing a song for father
with vigour
and solemnity.
In a voice, calming like the slumbering sea.
Father is a tree
Rooted—
and we are the branches
Spreading, a connection that cannot be destroyed.
A poem to celebrate my father, Gabriel Akinyemi, at seventy-one.