Singing Stones In The Brook Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Waters, flip over us with leafy hands.
Let your silvery fingers scratch us softly.
We're mere stones in cottages
between rocks elbowing each other.
Waters, slip over us growing

flowers on our backs. In watersheds
by tall banks we slip into sleep,
lotus hands stroking us, lifting us with
eagle claws taking us to nook-wrapped
wombs under blankets of branches.

We're mere stones in cubicles under
a tree standing unshaken
by swift arrows of warbling water
from the cascading bows of a stretched gust

over tufts of bearded rock. On a goateed
earth patch uncovering a scarlet
wound. Dressing bleeding chrysanthemums,

as bruises of carnations creep on taupe backs
by a water current's train bouncing off

its wagons of water on us, our spines
broken by bags of sand jumping
out of the storm of a lorry on flat tires.

(ii)

We're mere stones sleeping on an abandoned
riverbed, sighing mattress pebbles
and grumbling, groaning silt,
our bed spread song from winds,
as sheets of sun roll out a creeping comforter.

Waters, sheathe us with a breeze
wind-shouldered grasses trudging

on a kingfisher's path, as a flycatcher talks
to us with splashes of silence
and grief. Stitched firmly to our tawny bed,

we roll over ourselves, our feet
sunk deep down a carpet, where nothing drowns -

not even the schema
of our barnacled faces,
scars still singing a nightingale's song of love,
as we spin in chills
thorns of indifference biting us.