Eucalyptus Tree Man Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

This eucalyptus tree
of a man
grows and straightens up
into a featherless pillar,

a hairless electric pole
lighting up
the squeaking birdy telegraph crown

worn by stitched tight air
on a woody height
full of messages of love,

as parrots and robins sing
to doves
in their wing-swirling
and drooling breath and coughs.

Clear your choked throat
of a phlegm brewed
and folded up into a lump

with a windy whistling grin
to sink into your blind alley
of a self-tied throat,
where an untidy traffic of jalopies ends,

as a traffic policeman
raises his hand to rise
with a new undulating bouncing wave of life.

(ii)

By a river of gales flowing
on our strides,
hearth winds from cold tinder
pull only flowerless embers.

Are we not these
walking flames in yellow boots
kicking off dry leaves
of withered time,

when a nested moment
rolls off and grows another tree
brandishing no king's crown,

but a dropping crow cloud
over a wind-crackling petiole
flying off a tree branch's path
landing on a collapsed roof,

that man walking shoulders high,
when he's already dwarfed
into a sinking shrub of himself
stitched by no threads of buzzing bees?

(iii)

By a swelling drifting river
pulled by the debris
of our broken selves floating
in rising winds,

have we not yet been flung
into gaping culverts,
from which lizards creep and nod
in a tide of sweeping floods?

When a man in a café
pulls up his chair
to sit on broken legs
shorter than the bleeding limbs

of the smashed lizard
crawling up a tree,
as its wiry tail straightens out

into the guitar string in the storm
striking a note
to toss it ashore

into a hole in the valley
of two hefty branches kissing
in a dent on the tree trunk,
where every leaf meets
with another in a bow

in a tide of woven hugs,
the eucalyptus tree,
the only man standing thumbs up

with a spine that only breaks
into a floating flowing wind,
as life goes on,
crutches flapping eagle wings.