Palm Tree In Air's Bed Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(Crafted from a tree lying over Lake Mangamahoe)

(i)

Across from Mount Taranaki,
you lie stretched out
over a lake, your spine
breaking every day
with a pull by winds' hands.

You flew with red wings
from a volcano's mouth
and landed here at the edge

of a lake's cliff rising onto
a high table of land, sinking
your roots deep

into the shoulders of a pine-
and shrub-laddered
cliff, where you've been lying
on your back through
centuries of sun and mist.

(ii)

Under the sun from
the unbreakable strings holding
you in a deep sky's tray

and inner strings pulling life
into your curled bones and flesh,
you wield and brew

a feathered breeze to manicure
stretchy nails on your fingers
and brush your hair split
into unkempt green leaves.

Dreadlocks of your palm leaves fly
out over ripples of a lake,
to which you teach in whispers
of a wind how to stay seated

into your deepening roots
with the sharp claws
of a sparrow's whispers flying high
to grip the top of a spar holding

you on life's razor-edge
shore. Drifting and drifting
with your firm pull
to the wedge of a deep-rooted rock,

your waist pressing down
your feet into the ground
when storms
roar with ploughing molar
and canine teeth
that never bite you off for a chew.

(iii)

You pull back gods to swell
you into a tentacled rock,
its hundred hands and fingers

scribbling off on night's blackboard
stars that twinkle all night
with scripts from a colonnade,

Zeno of Citium bawling
out at you to hold on to your
firm grip, as you wince

without wailing in a thunderous storm
beating rattling drums of rain
from a sinking sky
never dropping into the lake's arms.