Bleached Stretched Arms Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Old maple tree
that once danced
and swirled
in a green shamrock frock,

you now stand
shedding
only brown butterflies
of broken dry leaves

cut and quartered
in oval bleached arms,
and shredded

into tiny cicadas
skipping
through quiet air
without
a skipping chirping voice.

How two leafless
trees stand gazing at
each other,
a wind drifting them
close to each other,

a nut hatch hurling
a glance across
at a chickadee's rolled
eyes hitting

only the cream silence
of the season's
snowy, spidery screens.

(ii)

How quietly does
silence spin
in a whirlpool of chirps
and whispers dying

before their throats
swallow clucks
and squawks lit by eyes
peeping each other

in a labyrinth of spying,
as life buzzes on
with no bees, only wee
still smoked
by wide-mouthed air.

By a Gypsy Queen
hyacinth, a flamingo
trumpet flips over
and hangs on a tree's
stretchy arm,

as if to call out
chickadees from dead snags
alive in fenced-in
walls of their tree cavities

tight-lipped
like midnight's hidden
back flags waved across
hollows of silence.

O hyacinth, spin your
trumpets in the wind
to blast out
a message to an awaited gale
that flies in

with pales of rakes
rattling in a louder stormy
wind to scrape off
cream scars and blisters
of snow, as painters

of spring arrive to spray
unclothed bleached trees
with green gowns
and frocks infested

with white arachnids of snow
carrying no voice to sing
from a cream and white
hue of smoke

with no fire from tight lips
blowing only silence
into hearths of still air
across bleached arms
stretched to grab

withered specks of gray,
as red flowers
ring bells of a new warmer life.