Ablution Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Boyo Mountain's body
rises above the chests
of surrounding hills and hillocks.

In the mist, the mountain
Bows for a haircut,
when storms cleave
stunted rolling trees

and leave pinnate swords of leaves
and blades of grass
to shave off small feathers
and afterfeathers of grass, as hills
fly with speed howling winds.

Clothed in a floating mesh
of mist, the hills
water and scrub their grasses
and reeds, flipping over

and sipping rain water,
as a sky's tap notch is turned on
and sometimes left
to flow unbridled through tunnels
of rain from arch to arch.

(ii)

In the whispering and rustling
wind stealing through
narrow lanes of bush and woods,

tall stems bend over
lower creeping grasses leaning
backward to trees

and tallish shrubs that wedge
the tumbling trunks and branches,
porous wild hats covering
only roots and chirping insects.

As taller grasses knock
their heads against each other,
and tap themselves

on the chest with twigs and leaves
hurled at each other,

sable-trunked dwarf trees
stand sealed to the ground, even
as floods roar through
their feet, sometimes nibbling off

their roots, whose claws
grip and hold on to chopped-off
and half-swallowed
mounds of drifting earth.

(iii)

After a shower, soft breezes
sprinkle lotions of rubbing drizzles
to give the swelling skin
of leaves and stems and trees

a sheen that swallows
every ray from an awakened sun.

Still shaking off sleep
after choruses and refrains
have streamed through

on breaking wheels
carrying a repetitive song of showers.

(iv)

Until refrains
from a crooning stream
take over the warble
of rain drops
hurled through leaves and blades
of grass blotting themselves

with breezes and thinly floated
towels of sun rays filtered
by a persistent latticed shimmer.

O green bodies scrubbed
in a tunnel of rain
for mooned and sunned months,
an ablution never cut off.