An Evening Of Fins And Rostrum Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Floral strawberry and pink patches
weave rosy and peach petals
in a breaking sky stretched out
to a bleaching haze and fingers of mist.

But sky's ceiling carries bone and dove,
pewter clouds cruising in,
as gray arms of a late afternoon stretch
and sprinkle light gray ribbons
andlarger sheets of galloping clouds.

Glass gradually drifts off, making way
for ink and soot shirts and blouses
drifting along a thin silver chord
darkening into the woven thick edge
of an eclipse's arc on the horizon.

Mahogany shadows spray merlot spaces,
growing charcoal until grease takes over.

Cormorants and bleeding frigate birds
of winged clouds swell
sky's smoked and darkened plastic,

flying off with the wind over
a horizon's cliff to tumble down a far-flung slope.
A machete ray jumps in splitting
stratus clouds into cream flying flakes,

hacking blankets of nimbus
into grey brightening light, as sun cleans up
dark straight patches and squiggles
of fading clouds, leaving
the crystal and gold screen of an early afternoon.

(ii)

Under a pantone hue of an azure
sky, the beaches fill up again
with navy blue, yellow, indigo
and green colors of shirts and pants,
various jackets of small birds

flying amid tuxedos of long-tailed birds
and the unseamed shirts of swallows.

Sail on, sail on folks. The field expands.

Ribbons of blush and taffy birds
embroider the sky with feathers
and wind-sprayed afterfeathers.

They stitch circles and ellipses, floating
to the west. They knit stockings
and bootees, old men
and babies drifting inairships of a bright

day ballooned into cotton balls
andsilver wings of light and rays.

Sun, widen your wings, spray your feathers.
Sun, flap your rays
like an albatross' umbrella arc.
Sun, spray Sirius' powder.

(iii)

And night-dressed folks chant the bright day
flown off to islands on sun and stars,

a hawk ofa nimbus flaps wings
to roar with early night and flowers
of a shredded lightning flashed on and off.

Are these the fumes of a downpour
from a burning sky
or winged winds from a flying sea, as it sprays
itself to expanding arms of dark land,

spitting out to a shore no late fisherman,
but a bundle of fins, rostrum
and the huge mass of a chopped peduncle
wearing the coat of night's darkest patch?

Slam your brakes at an alabaster world
and fly with a peacock's hue to the sailor
rolling over in Neptune's stretchy sleeping arms.