Community Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Not just
a sunlit
thread stitching
folks together.

Not the rays
that weave
and tie them
into a knot,

but sun
and moon
building
castles of light
to harbor
the knightly

sentinel
of upright pillars
standing
like meercats
planted to guard
day and night.

A gang
of meercats
trained to stand
to attention,

when blankets
of night
fall at mid-morning.

And dudes ride
whinnying horses
on streets,
as they walk,

stamping heavy feet
on cobblestones.

(ii)

It's the brown
crawling woolen
thread holding
a file of ants together,

as they climb
up stories of their
anthills to
a marbled floor
full of honey's glue

each guy nibbles
off to stay chained
each to each,

shoulder to shoulder
laying out crawling
barn red bricks
that hold a tower

on a tower, sky
the only silver roof,
corrugated sheets
of clouds plumped
down into deep
chairs sitting on them.

How the cemented
and plastered bricks
hold ants of folks
to hang on

to their pyramidal tree
of an anthill
standing on a slab
flanked by flowers,

as they scatter
off to find homes
by cathedrals of termites

hurling out schemes
to them to build
baobab-trunk pyramids.