“Eighty‑One Miles of Morning”

— A Birthday Poem for President Joseph Nyuma Boakai

They say a boy once left the Lofa hills
With nothing but a book of stubborn hope,
Bare feet tasting every mile to Monrovia,
Walking his way along a country’s spine of red clay road.

No convoy cleared the path before him,
No siren split the village morning air;
Just dust, and dreams, and a mother’s quiet blessing
Pushed that boy toward a classroom, not a chair.

They say his hands once hugged cold rubber trees,
At Firestone, where dawn is tapped in cups of dew;
Where each cut bled a wage for food and paper,
And each blister whispered, “This is not the end for you.”

From tapper’s knife to ledger in the warehouse,
From LPMC to public service halls,
He climbed not on the backs of broken people,
But rung by rung, through discipline and calls.

You have watched five flags above this harbor pale and brighten,
Seen rice riots, war drums, ballots, coups;
Carried files while presidents chased glory,
Held your peace when lesser men broke rules.

Now at eighty‑one, you hold no boy’s illusions—
The country is not mended by a song;
Yet you stand, a farmer with a nation’s season,
Reading soil, and rain, and what has gone so wrong.

You remind us that a budget is not numbers,
It is roofs that do not leak on children’s heads;
It is roads that let a farmer trust his harvest,
It is clinics trading hopelessness for meds.

You speak of ARREST not as a slogan,
But as a warrant for our ancient sins—
For greed, for waste, for careless theft of futures,
For leaders who forget why voting begins.

On this day the candles climb to eighty‑one,
And yet, you know that time is not your own;
You are keeper of a small and fragile hour,
Until the seeds you tend can stand alone.

So may your strength be equal to your story—
The boy who walked from Lofa into light,
The man who bent to rubber trees for breakfast,
Then rose to sign our fortunes into sight.

May you remember, when the crowds grow louder,
The quiet feet that once knew every stone;
For those who walk today from distant counties
Deserve a smoother road than you have known.

Eighty‑one miles of morning now behind you,
Yet the longest journey still is in your care:
To leave a land where no child must tap latex
Just to buy a seat in any classroom anywhere. Happy birthday, JNB of the red‑dust highway—
May history judge you not by praise or fear,
But by the day a Lofa child can whisper,
“Poverty was not my prison,
Because a walker from my county
Led us here.”