Dusk's Bicycles Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Stormy legs ride
a soft wind
whining and whistling
through dusk's
baked air.

Light but sturdy
bamboo arms
steer a rattling
wind's handlebars.

Ticking time rides
both of them
in the hazy cloud
of waiting

sitting under a copper
and bronze sky,

when a fly rides
a bicycle pedaling
through
the drifting window.

Let the fruit fly
have his meal,
nibbling off a banana
in the fruit basket.

It rides a higher
saddle
on the rattling wheels
of a drifting
window bar,
as the fruit fly pedals out.

(ii)

I wait for Jason
to cruise
back home from
the grocery store

with a fire-red
sandwich of layered
fresh tomatoes
on ketchup

topped with a barbecue-
coated flat
slice of beef,
but only a bicycle

of a wind
rattles with spokes
and rotor
jamming through
the window,

as a hibiscus
tree branch storms
its way through

with bells
of flowers ringing
silently through
on no bicycle,
as ride a sighing
and sobbing
bicycle of waiting.