ETHIOPIA OF MY SOUL - poem

Caught up again in
famine, the young woman
replays 1984 memories:

as a child, saw lives
tossed about in abundant
numbers, adults weak
trekking to food centers.
In a nurture of love, young
ones received the last
bits of flour, rain
vacant across her land.

Now grown up, today’s
path a repeat horror
of famine
smothers anyone who
dares walk in defeat. She
cries for her own young:

“Holy water, spray on crops,
return from the sky, oh rain.”