An Undulating Wait Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

From a rolling, crawling
daisy sunrise
perched on puffy
cotton clouds,

the dome of their house
narrows into a strait
of space they swim through.

Sighing out
like twittering squeaking
fluttering birds:

"Where're they, where're
the children
seized from their nest
before light
broke out and fell down

through holes
amid leaves that whizzed,
but nobody heard".

They swim,
sitting on feathers of air
in the wallowing wings
of their world's giant bird.

Flapping no wings,
but waddling with them
through swamps
swelling into low shrubs
of stillness.

Light sheets of air fold up
to a thick cornsilk
and silver sundown
raising them
to their feet planted
on stools and high stones,

as they swing
their necks across
and see only
woody and stony silhouettes.

(ii)

The girls keep on
pulling rays of sun
flung like gold
and silver fibers.

Drawn out
to their spidery edges,
as they drown
in convoluted depths
of needlework.

Dissolving into pearl
and white threads
from bobbins

oval as white and brown
warm eggs. Hatching
when stitched sketches
of chickens squawk
and crawl on their silent fabric.

Steering slowly
their hands on
finger-twisting needles,
as they make pillow
cases for spacy beds.

Carrying no bubbling
children. No cackling
giggling mouths
spinning on silver discs

round as the toothy
white sun
melted into the shadows
of a raid, boots
booming like uprooted
rolling boulders.

(iii)

But they build towers
of hope
they'll return,
as their sturdy bricks
grow brittle and collapse.

Only a hut stands,
its thatched roof covering
a hollow space,

as they peek into tunnels
of air in the bush
that won't cough out
the children.

As a light wind blows
from the smoke-pouting lips
of a candle
smoking a bobbing cigarette,
a parting night spraying
no face of a child.