A Day In Fits And Starts Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

In the silver morning,
as the sun jumps up
and down his feet,
he grows shorter than
his chapped soles,

his thinned-out shadow
crushed into specks
and smashed
into layers of dust trailing
him, as he walks.

In the pearl morning,
he sits by his cottage
breathing in deep sun

to give him a kick
in the head that shoots
him into the clouds
of the sailing, rolling day.

He picks up a steering
wheel from the sun's hands,
when tree shadows
jump across his path,

as he digs into his head
for the shrimp
to have him dive into deep
sea crawling waters,

spreading him out
to swim with wings, as he's lost
in his unfiltered thoughts
tossing him around

like a half-dry leaf hanging
in a cruising without
the gears of a budding gale.

(ii)

As he wraps himself
up in frost and cloud air,
mid-morning wearing
fur and dust and flying
blades of trimmed grasses,

he jumps and rebounds
with swelling sun flipping
out arms and fingers
over his running yard.

He reaches out for a hoe
to drum and sing-plough
the earth to feed him
with the tussock hue to drive
him to edges of himself.

As he figures out the seed
to plant in his extending
garden of schemes
full of flowers he's yet to pick
across a spectrum.

Full daylight opens slowly
and closes its fast wings
of the moth to ride him
through to a new horizon
without taking him

through stretchy meadows
to skip with buzzing cicadas,
his day only clicking.

(iii)

But he peeks at the sky
just in time to strike it
with thunder's fat drumstick
that breaks it into pieces,

leaving holes to leak,
as arrows of silver rain drop,
spraying air with colors
he has not been waiting for.

Until a raven hue
wraps him up in a sheathe.

It leaves him no gear
to switch to, as cotton muslin
drives him through
to a swaddle blanket.

Rolling and drifting him
to a flint and foggy sun,
as daisy air bounces
him under moonstones

that breathe out
neither daylight, nor night.