A Crocodile Devours The Sky Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

The day has been
a colored sketch book
flipped over
by a deity's thumb.

The day's been
a painter's
drifting catalogue

searching
for clear skies
of all light shades

spinning only more
light and soft tones.

Now the day sprays
daisy and pearl
screens, the day
dissolving
into lace and cotton,

but flips over
from cerulean into
a full sky's wingspan

splashing a light
blue screen for birds
to bathe themselves
and flow in fluid

channels of elastic air
woven and drawn out
into gossamer fibers
pulling in sharp-eyed birds.

(ii)

In small numbers
they cruise through
to scoop out

cream and silver
speckles and flecks
and other traces

of gems trailing
sapphire
screens of sky.

In the thousands
clothed in black
spots and splotches,

starlings swarm in,
the sky a drawn-out
screen swelling
a nylon expanding sheet

into a light brown
and beige embroidery
of birds, tan weaves,
more birds floating

through, as they
they stitch themselves
into each other.

(iii)

Creating giant and monster
animals flowing
through a jungle of air,

the birds carried through
in various forms
of sketched beasts,
a crawling crocodile opening

its fangs, a large pair
of scissors, shredding
a drifting horizon
into specks
of more starlings,

which it devours,
as the embroidered sky
drops off into
a flat melting cream stretch.