Sculptor And Weaver In A Storm Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Howling yelping dogs tossed off
by monster hands swung in mid-air.
You've landed, thick rock-carrying
cloud flipping out tunnels swallowing

whistling dust and spun fleeing columns,
gales in blades and rakes of a pronged
sweeping roar and chirping flakes

of big-bellied skipping grasshoppers
spiraling through thorns of slate clouds.

A stretching hickory and onyx night
has flown over a giant ziziphus dome, feathered
with clouds and fog and mist,
lumps of mud splashed and sailing - sailing

with the wings of black birds, crakes
and hanks of wool steering flufftails.
More chisels and hammers
fly in the winds flipping off wood peelings
of butterflies riding dragon flies.

(ii)

Sculptor and weaver are dancing here,
sprayed palms, breaking fingers
of dust-powdered leaves stretching themselves out,
branches blowing in flames
from nearby harmattan bushes.

Birds and dogs sculpted by sculptor
and weaver in the wind
fly off to land a pile of debris
growing like a sharp-crowned hill.

(iii)

Eagle wings flap amid sea gulfs
of office white paper trash,
landing them on a ridge of dry and wet leaves.

At last sculptor and weaver,
you've sculpted and woven
out of wooden debris,
baskets of leaves and dry sticks,
sea shells sticking fingers out.

Scoop out a basket of love.
Blow in with dozen-fingered hands.
Blow in with rotating rakes,
prongs smelling and capturing
with flying microscopic eyes
to catch a spinel
that sneaked out from a crushed house.

Scoop out grandma's ear ring
that flowers her with memories
of her late daughter.

(iv)

Scoop out grandpa's quill
beneath the leaves woven by storm
and piled in a debris
of dust and scrolls of dry leaves
from chopped weevilled trees.

Chisel out of the hard bark
of memory, a sculpted silhouette,
the only gem the storm
could not weave or sculpt into shape,


grandma's loving face
just before she departed:

It was framed for a badge to twinkle
brighter than sun and star looking
at each other in the eye,
as dawn throws a shower of light on its face.