Earring Of Dawn Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

I find my mother's
blue morpho earring
doing the waltz
with a star losing blood,

cream beads of sweat
in the funneled sky
thinning out into a spark
from a swelling
and popping deep fireside.

Tiny matchsticks
of clouds melt mounds
of wax into lace
blown-out candles

breathing out blue starlings
to settle on bronze
leafy twigs and branches

hung by drifting clouds
baked into hanging yellow husks.

(ii)

The fire of dawn
cackles on, breaks red hot
coals to burn off
patches of gray clouds.

What grinds time
into powder sprayed over
a melting candle
burning dawn's wax?

The sailing pink hand
of a cloud, an early altar
of a cocooned morning

sprinkles light across
to spread out candelabra
on ceilings of a hanging
sky under the roof
of expanding bird wings,

a crow's head shooting
out a beak carrying
the blue speck of the earring

mama lost in her cloudy
drawer swirling with cotton
nylon threads to stitch
grey hems of pre-silver moments
into a new rind of dawn.

(iii)

At last, the hidden face
of a muted sun's fort
has found its way into the core
of mama's piece of furniture,

as a light dawn wind
polishes a splayed sky
to look like its vanished face.

Bouncing pink splashes
stroke with thinner brushes
to spray sky with a light
translucent silver carrying
a patch of the light blue sac,

from which mama's earring
croaked and crawled out
into a crystal drifting a gold-lined tray:

How a white wood butterfly
trailing a blue morpho's tail
rips open a pink-filled sky into

a sun rising with an egg yolk
for an early breakfast
spread out on a blue-gray table

to draw in cotton-white
and silver-beige dishes
for a well-armed morning.