Beaded Skeletons Of December Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Hanging rain
and drizzle drops
cling to skeletons
of trees,
like silver beads

garlanding
dry bony branches
on trees gripping earth

with studded boots
of roots
holding sandy loam tight.

And the boots
flip out stretchier
tentacles of roots
to grip earth's
rising mantle.

(ii)

There'll be time,
when everything,
every animal,

living and limping
and quivering
in the catapulted
wind, half-living
in choked breath,

will sprout
and rise back with
stiff wings
and fingers of dry brittle
twigs singing
in angles of wind,

as arms of clean-shaven
branches
hang down from trees
in skinny leaves.

They'll crave
to brighten
self into new gems,

scratching
and scraping off
sticking
withered leaves.

(iii)

Unlike November trees
once heavily
dressed up in thick
flesh of forest
green leaves and now

moss and viridian
skeletons of trees still
scratching off
dry leaves and scaly barks,

as the skeletons stand,
adorned with silver beads,
they dapple
themselves with creeping
lace and cotton hue

of shadowy clouds
and withered
goldenrod leaves.

They manicure themselves
in the growling wind,
trimming off thick
pointed nails
on swinging, flying twigs.

And still hanging on
to their once
shamrock and fern gowns,

cling to beaded
strings swinging off
their fingers
bracelets of drizzles.

Am I the last
strayed dude
of an abandoned earth,

as time wheels in
with the graphite hue
of a new smoky world?