Hunted Hunter Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Across the glen
flattening with shamrock
undergrowth
into a half-marshy meadow,

light darkens
with one too many
tree shadows
to dodge,

as they build
a night before dusk settles.

The sun throttles
Its well-fueled engine
to shower down light

floating only
thick bodies of shadows.

Night raises tall walls
of night tumbling
over in the bush to thicken night,

as a bright sun above
a bush of stems,
shrubs, trees and rising
vines raise their hands
even higher to poke ceilings
of falling skies.

(ii)

But hovering sunrays
fly with a condor's wingspan
to spray light
chewed and devoured

by clusters of leaves,
their green flags
dark shadows on earth's floor.

The dying tottering sun
strolls, tramping,
its heavy legs landing
with few spread-out feathers
and ruffled wings,

as the sun still shaves
hairs and fur
of wallowing shadows
with a sharp bright razor,

the sprawling racing bush
stooping
into palisades
of trimmed shadows

the breathless hunter
has not planted, nor nursed.

But the hunter paves
and carves his way
with hands and machete
through thickened arms of a forest,

tree branches falling low,
as leaves
as pin-edged twigs drop.

(iii)

Palisades of planted
palm fronds,
home to trapped game,
float through,
rise and raise flags of night,

the hunter haunted only
by shadows and light.

He dodges all shades of night
covered snares,
but as his steps flow with him
in a large river of light

to rising reeds untouched
by a bird's beak,
he flings his legs wide and far,

falling into a snare
he'd set light years back
he's forgotten
in his night of shadows from light.