Bones And Warps Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Only alabaster bones
of dry trees
cling to warps
in a heavily threaded air
of snow ashes

after a white flamy fire
of snow pours itself
out through sun-torn
cyan brushing a sewing

tailor of a wind
missing stitches in empty
and hollow spaces
of life abandoned
to cotton skeletons on streets.

After a spate
of flying snow on gray-
bearded brows,
low shrinking shrubs
shrugging off shoulders,

dry leaves drop
dead too,
burying themselves
under ashes
and herringbone weaves

of twigs hooked
in daisy fibers
swinging over
broken bones and warps.

Only cream hairy
wafts and wefts
and spidery filaments

hang on wind-shaven
trees, their branches

folding vines of arms
round each other,
as they flip out fingers

crossed on stiff
waists planted
on graphite flint trunks.

(ii)

O scaly barks
Shedding dry skin
and the only thin
curvy and angled remains

of bones on skeletons
of tall jumping

rising umber bodies
that once rose
taller and taller
to join hands

with shamrock and hunter
green leaves
often singing down
from swinging nests
under sunny breezes,

as passers-by sweep
past their way
through brown-bearded

bushes. Here I stop
to a cold bird's alto,
a man clung to his own ice,

as he blows
without mouth into
his flute of loneliness
clinging

to no bones and warps,
life a seamstress
stitching ripped hems.