By Dr. J. Kerkula Foeday
My Weekly Poetic Reflection, Issue 15, Monday, July 13, 2026
Some handshakes become bridges; others are merely pauses between battles. Time alone knows the difference.
The camera arrives before conviction.
It waits, patient as a priest,
For rivals to gather
Beneath its impartial eye.
“Closer,” someone whispers.
And history, still bleeding beneath the bandages,
Is instructed to smile.
Hands extend.
Palms meet.
Flash.
Another photograph
is born into the republic.
Tomorrow’s newspapers will call it unity.
Commentators
will christen it reconciliation.
The crowd, hungry for peace,
Will drink the image before asking
Whether the well contains water.
For this is the oldest craft
of power:
To persuade the eye
Before persuading the conscience;
To polish the portrait
While the fracture
remains beneath the frame.
How easily the lens forgives.
It crops away
the whispered insults,
The sleepless conspiracies,
The bargains struck
Where no citizen is invited.
It teaches memory
To confuse appearance
with transformation.
How many embraces have outlived
Only the camera’s shutter?
How many smiles have dissolved
Before the ink
upon the headlines dried?
How many promises,
Dressed in immaculate suits,
Have entered the Capitol
as saviors only to depart as echoes?
The republic remembers.
It remembers when enemies
Discovered brotherhood at election’s doorstep.
It remembers when loyalty
Changed its surname with the changing wind.
It remembers that applause is often rented,
While integrity must own its house.
The old market woman
Selling bitterballs beside the broken pavement
Has learned to read faces
More carefully than manifestos.
The fisherman casting his net before sunrise
Knows that calm water
May conceal the strongest current.
The motorcycle rider,
The teacher,
The mason,
The widow,
The student who studies by candlelight …
They have become historians
Without publishing a single book.
They have watched too many ceremonies
Where ribbons were cut
Before foundations were laid;
Where speeches rose
Higher than buildings;
Where hope was measured
By microphones
instead of deeds.
Politics, they have discovered,
Is often performed like theater.
Every actor knows the cue.
Every costume is carefully chosen.
Every smile is rehearsed
Until it appears
to have been born of the heart.
Only the curtain knows
what happens backstage.
Yet I do not condemn every handshake.
Some hands have indeed rebuilt nations.
Some embraces
have rescued generations
From the inheritance
of vengeance.
Some adversaries have become
architects of peace.
History is generous enough
To remember them.
But history is equally patient.
It waits until the applause fades,
Until the cameras have sought another spectacle,
Until the flowers, laid before the monument, have withered,
Until power itself has surrendered its borrowed garments.
Then,
Without anger,
Without applause,
Without fear,
History asks the only question
that has ever mattered:
What followed the photograph?
Did the handshake become justice?
Did the smile become mercy?
Did the promise become bread
for the hungry,
Schools for forgotten children,
Dignity for weary workers,
Hope for a nation that has buried too many dreams?
Or was it another mirage,
Beautiful from a distance,
Convincing to the thirsty,
Yet vanishing the moment
the people dared to draw near?
So let the cameras continue their faithful work.
Let them preserve every embrace,
Every salute,
Every carefully measured smile.
They are only witnesses to a moment.
Time,
They say often, will tell.
It is witness to life.
And history,
That incorruptible archivist,
Develops every hidden negative
Until appearance can no longer bargain with truth.
For nations are never redeemed by photographs.
They are redeemed
When justice no longer requires a camera,
When reconciliation needs no audience,
And when a handshake remains unbroken
Long after the flash has faded.