Animals In The Wind Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

When the wind blows
and slowly grows,
trumpet in mouth,
as it sweeps through

with crackling breaking,
clicking broom sticks,
and showering
croaking brittle leaves.

Flat green leaves also tap
and slap faces
and the drum backs
of alabaster silhouettes.

(ii)

Husk-lipped silk tongues
sizzle in bowls
of puffs churned by ladles

in the skeleton hands
of a hurrying cook,

as a light drizzle
spills and splits off
the cook's fingers

lighting up flaring
pinching biting flames
on its ice-coated tips

dipped to taste
thicker showers jumping
down from
air's caved bowls.

(iii)

Rattling palm fronds
sweep through air
in light cream
and silver flying rags.

And the buzzing bee
in a flute's voice
sometimes stings the lion
to growl and roar

with it, as it dumps
half- dry leaves
and ropy knotty reeds
to pile up into a pyramid.

(iv)

As another roaring lion
of the wind opens
the pyramid's door
for a clicking hidden visit,

a needle-tipped
hissing tongue
pokes air into pieces
of flying debris,

as a slithering snake rolls.
Glides and slips
through stretching furrows
in a narrow wind's farm.

Only life shot down
by a cotton ray of sun
over and through
a flapped long-beaked
whispering wind,

pecks off the hot palms
of the cook
writhing and wriggling
from a ladle's scalding bite.