An Ant Carries A Mountain Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

The old man behind the trees sits
all day ferreting out spinels of life
from the sinking chasm
of his mind bouncing down a slope
into the ditch blowing a faint horn,

sword-tossing moments with no green leaves,
a tree of memory tumbling,
diving into a deep deepening gorge,

only specks of dry leaves left to fly
and burn in a wallowing forgetfulness
with a hippo's thickness
and shredded geography, no map for the beast.

(ii)

Where's the roaring lion
parading the bumps of a mountain's forest
now a muffled monotone,
the far-flung chirp of a hole-ridden cricket?

Where are the paws
that pasted its paws on a village's billboard
roaring the words "The lion is around
strolling to a bushy entrance,
the bridge that will cross him over to your door"?

Where's the last bronze tuft of grass
on a swelling rock
whisking a short stick of a tail
writing letters from a red ink pot of blood?

(iii)

The old hunter, master
of the roaring mountain, twirls into the track
he's trampling on, as his boots
break on no bumps, no rocky spikes,
no fang of a lurking curved-out cobblestone,

but on a thick slab of fright.
It takes him down a slithering slope,
from a lonely ant

that creeps him up to the other side
of the slope, a tent of branches
opening its door to a lion's worm-ridden carcass,
the mountain of a hunter's
burden of fright dropping on the ant,
as it crawls off with the giant boots of windy legs.