Cutting Corners Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

We don't hold out
a shortened hand
to cut corners on life's tail,
when its head
drives fate into a gulch.

For only chance is left
to lift us back
onto a rising perch.

Only the arrow-tipped eye
is left to shoot
a small fish with the gripping
hand of a gluing sight.

The sandy beach offers
the pebbled carpet
of a sneaky heron,

head held high for its eye
to swipe
a small fish and a crab
for a sun-sprayed day.

(ii)


On a slippery ivory
and cream-pebbled beach,
the tall-legged bird

stretching its pupil out
into the powder of air,

takes off with a swung lance
of a gale, and paddles
his webbed feet to dive

into a higher story of sky,
its door closed
to the razor mouth
of a dancing crown eagle.

The heron cuts corners
off a graphite cloud
housing a lurking hawk,

flaps its wings to cut off
the cloud of a harrier,
a kitedancing in a shadow cloud,
when air is all cream.

(iii)

O heron, gallop
through an azure patch
hiding no kite.

Dive over a moss
and juniper smudge
to the mouth
of an ink-speckled stretch

and the cloudiest
jungle ofrising soot
with smoky breaking branches
of shadow strata

shedding off cream feathers
into pistachio trees of clouds.

Gallop through
the darkest cloud
drifting with lances of wind
to the tree trunk

quivering with a slim reptile,
which your arrow mouth
will chop off now,

as you pick a fruit of life
for cutting corners
through a wavering nimbus.