Knot Of Life Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(for mourningAmbazonian folks)

(i)

In the tight room
of a shadowy nook,
the folks carry
grains of sand

and pebbles in their
wave-stretched
eyes watering mulch

for another round
of wailing
and sniveling, sobs
licking off

trickles and more
fast-flowing
streams and floods,
the deluge
only swelling on.

Many streams
have crooned
and flowed,

the main brook's
course babbling
like warblers

for Godspeed
its glistening
tributaries hurled

off to watersheds
of memory
by kingfishers

sticking to sand
banks
breaking off

like silvery eyes
bounced off
running eye brows.

(ii)

And stormy eye
lashes waving bushes
of feathery
and pinnate leaves

in the winged
storm of wincing
and screaming.

Streams run
into a river racing
down into
a stretchy lake,

this tottering world
summed up
and underwritten
for death's loans.

O lake of lakes,
after a storm
with latticed and saw-
edged wings

to sieve and filter
and sift and purify
thick tears
into stitched springs
of an expanding

lake, I sit by
the banks of waters
in calabashes
for the folks

to have my face
cleansed by the very
burning tears

pulling them towards
the bonfire
of strokes and gazes
weaving the folks
into a hugging knot.