House Of Flowers Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Cottonwood fluff,
thorny thistle
and milkweed pile
up the bricks

for a cubicle's walls,
a fort to lodge
a whispering
twittering family,

a house built
of reeds, cattails
and milkweed,
its occupant
a bird dressed in sunrays.

Its gold mined
from air,
and not from a shaft
deep down
closer and closer
to earth's mantle,


the mineshaft spared
for rainy days.

(ii)

Dandelion and willow
catkins mold
more heavier cement-
dosed bricks

to strengthen
girder holding the walls,

the only roof
an overhanging
growing plant rooted
in earth's slab

to flip out an umbrella
of leaves
no downpours of rain
can pierce
with its wet needles.

(iii)

But goldfinch,
the occupant and owner,
doesn't wait
for the house to get rusty

to pull it down,
for new bricks and cement
to erect
a brand new home.

Only burdock,
the bulldozer
drives in on heavy wheels,

its burrs the blade
to trap all occupants
and devour them,

as a firmly
gripping hand
traps
Captain Goldfinch
in a dungeon.