A Gale's Dogs And Cats Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Since we moved in here,
I'd not caught sight
of any stray dogs or cats

in this Eldorado
of silence, where folks
breathed in their
tight-lipped walls

closing in on them
and barked off
dodgy shadows, saying nothing.

And quietly devoured
far-flung chirrups
and clicks singing closely
to their clogged ears.

(ii)

It's been a place
of life murmured
and muttered out

in sun-rayed
trays of whispers
dished out
to choked throats

and double-eyed
folks, whose retina
had cranked up

machines of sight
outside their maculas
to talk and scream

and cackle
with mouths' helices
frozen into stone,
motors switched off.

(iii)

Hibernating in silence's
cocoon in my room
this afternoon,

my only interlocutors
were gold leaves
and silver creeping hydra

of sun rays dancing
and bouncing
in through the window

from tree branch cracks
to land, drunk
with sun, on my lanolin floor,

sketching themselves
into chained
shadows of rhododendrons,
whose color I cannot see.

(iv)

Slanted pillars of sun
rays leaning
on daisy and ivory sheets
on my bed

pushed and tugged me
into a spray of sticking
silence, the thickest
layer on my swollen mattress

that tossed me
downhill a sharp slope
of sleep, from which I awoke
whispering to one
of my daughters:

"Watch out for rabid
dogs and cats
down the parking lot
across the trees".

"There're no animals
here - not even a cockatiel.

A strong gale has been
blowing through
whining and growling trees",
she chuckles back,
adding a gentle cackle.