In Our Cabin Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Always you in your braided
figure O child blossoming
at the edge ofour bed's shore.

Our trip begins with
a slippery bird, this tapered end

of a sheet, from which I feel you
in this flying pillow
when sea waters expand

into splashed pieces of a broken night
and dawn stitches edges
with the cream threads of a gray cloud
bleached into silver light.

Dawn breaks it fabric and stitches
it back to the wall

closest to our bed rising
and extending with ripples
of our touch

andnips and moth scratches,
a silver dust of dawn still sprayed
where you rolled over

and left, leaving me in ashes
of your embers spreading into a canopy
of sunflowers by tulips swelling
with your soft hands.

(ii)

In this cabin of love
a river pulls a mattress
on its furrow-split back,

its belly swelling a place
for our dwelling hands brushing
and pricking each other

as we enter a confluence
and dive into a desert of sea,
flat waves pulling our ship
with soft hands, our arms crossed.

(iii)

O ship the night is stretched
out in a land of shaven leaves
and manicured flowers.

In a land pots and vases,
from which our gazes climb
to a widening
mirror of us on the ceiling.

brushed to a shine
with a hearth's sun

still bathing flying flocks
of birds thatflutter

with our fidgety hands bouncing
like the mini-toy I planted
in your hand like a gem.

(iv)

In our room, where I rocked
you from the cot
of my lap, as you sank into sleep
every day, I count stars.

I count suns paving tracks
for the moon riding me
to gallop with gale-spun waves

and roll on their wheels
drifting to the harbor,
as you land on roller skaters
with a breeze tugging
your breath into my unclothed chest.