Road To The Firmament Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

By a cold
breeze-brushing
beach in a snail
shell of shoulder
rubbing shoulder

across sands
chewed and sprinkled
across
a lurking desert
of burnt-out memory,

fling over
your arrow eyes
into the sea.

Stretch your temple
and forehead
beams to bounce
with the waves

torn into bleached
rags of foam
brewing froth
and shore-stroking
straight line,
no shore drifting in,

sky dropping to
its knees
at the horizon's
cutting lance.

(ii)

The world's
slashed
beyond brows

into blue shadows
shading
a bicycling
whale with a key

to sky not above
the head, but beneath
webbed feet
of splashed waves,

stretched toes
wet like a duck's
paddles
waddling off life,

when it's dry
and sun feathers
stroke roaring fur

in tufts of grass
across a seafoam
and lime savanna,
grass flowing.

Life too growls
across drifting ripples
of air,
nothing dropping
from the sky.

(iii)

But face a sea
roar with a breeze
of inner bowl,
and a storm wave

ploughs through
lowered
feathers of sky
touching sea,

drifting you to a cave
by a sandstone
flipping open doors
to another sky,

as you scale
down rock
after rock after stone
and boulder
to a basement's floor.

Here, peek at
that far-flung
butterfly
of a boat

drifting to the edge
of sea, a horizon
slashing sky.

Beyond it spins
a firmament -

not on sea's emerald
carpet; not
in air's wallowing world,
but on tufts
of grass flowing

in your inner
bowl filtering a roar
into a hare's
squeak, grasshoppers
lifting you
into the firmament.