Searching For A Missing Toddler Poem by Felix Bongjoh

Searching For A Missing Toddler



(i)

In the whispering, murmuring zephyr,
let the palm trees stretch
their seaweed sleeved arms

and shake their umbrella heads,
dancing and whistling
amid their emerald bobbing flags.

Let curled fingers
from their boulder vases
of buttocks
wave and weave

threads of air
into a silky path

in the sailing wind, where a weaver
walks with a flamingo's legs

to the oracles
and avatars holding heads high,

their buttocks rooted
into their swirling stools

in rising hands,
knights bearing their thrones.

(ii)

Let unshaven dreadlocks veer heads
to the barricaded hole's fort.

Let curved arms
of flickering leaves,
blare and buzz to us, tell us

where the dead
are hiding, and rolling, planted,
in a bunkered kingdom

between quivering banana stalks
and long-necked bamboos.

Tell me now, bulbul. Tell me, warbler,
as I creep on webbed palms
and you pedal a bicycle on grass

O umbrella raffia tree,
O spears
of elephant grass stems
shooting sky glass.

(iii)

Hand me over the bowl
of singing bromeliads
and twirling lilacs

grown cot
for the flowered toddler
still burning in his wounds,

by the flaming shrubs
of sunflowers swelling into gold dawn,
where
sunbirds blow flutes

ringing tight-lipped bells
crooning
with the drawn-out
stretch of a river:

In this crinkum-crankum
of a road
along lightning's dancing path,

O river, stretch out
your elastic arm to a rose
in a lighthouse
on an island of splashed light.

Sunday, March 15, 2020
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Felix Bongjoh

Felix Bongjoh

Shisong-Bui, Cameroon
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