Afternoon Tree Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Gray tree, shoot your
crown into plastic
air and rise into a peak
in curls of a tornado.

Tree in the wind,
dance with the melting
flint and dove clouds.
In your graphite rise

Into a thin arrow
slithering with lightning's
tail to poke and fondle sky

with a rainbow's melting
gaudy garment snatched
from the early pink wings
of an early unfolding dusk.

Let jumping crickets
of red flames
and rosy balls of sparks
flower your trunk
with glowing red specks.

Let shrunk brown petals
sailing like gaudy
butterflies from closets
with varied collared shirts
swell a rainbow
wrapping a tree's swollen hips.

O flying reddish knots
in ripped reddish sleeves
of cinder trailing.

(ii)

A tall tree of fumes
and smoke grows,
its branches and leaves
woven into masses

of pewter and porpoise
smoke thinning on
its edges to a silver mist.

Cinder from light
burnt leaves spirals
into black tiny birds
and flies, fossil midgets
and mosquitoes

nibbling off air's quivering
and drifting light gray skin.

Over flint contours,
flames are flying from roof tops
with bird wings.

Egret flames soar,
flapping their wings.

Ostrich flames rise
heavily into clouds,
gold flames swelling

into flying bustards fleeing
from dark wings of wind.

The afternoon has exploded
into a wing-flapping,
dim-bodied
flower hurling off and sprinkling

twinkling red and yellow petals,
a fire swallowing
whispering and crawling houses

in a taupe and dark mire
hanging in mid-air's
creeping bouncing bog.