Alade Street

 

I remember Alade Street

It was a wide one, untarred,

hardly traveled by other than us –

the dwellers of the street

It stretched from the residence of the mayor –

The Baale we called him

All the way to Mrs. Kojo’s residence

 

There were side roads dispersing from

This quiet, untrunk-like trunk road

Of the tributary roads, two were tarred

The rest were like the trunk –good sand sticking to the ground

They were travelled by the bicycle riders –Raleigh was a synonym for bicycles then

 

I liked Alade Street, there was no up-down motion of even the bicycles

They just crossed Alade street to go on to Morocco Road and others

So, we were safely out, and flew our kites

We won competitions as one kite reached higher than the rest

And we bade the champion tell us how he got a higher height

 

Come Harmattan, we ran up and down

Trying to catch the cloud we saw from the other end

But the cloud always cleared before we got this end

And when we looked, the other end now had the cloud.

We never caught a cloud, but we never stopped trying

In Alade Street