Snow From Painters' Hands Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Snow from a deep pot
of spray, when sky sits
in a tight drum

lidded and sealed
to explode
with splashes well above
a Hyperion tree.

As arrows of more
white streaks
are shot down from
higher hills, as gods'
palms leak,

gripping no thin feathers
by their thickset tails,
only hairy plumes,
as they drop
deeper and deeper

towards emerald
and taupe earth bouncing
quietly beneath
flying and floating streaks.

Now comes painters'
hands in light snowy winds
to sprinkle
streaks folding up the world

into unwound scrolls
and braids
of white smoke,
and surgical threads
to hold the world

in bobbins
unwinding whiter scripts
no gods can read.

(ii)

Bleach the world
into cream white space,
but not me,

as I hang onto the beast
of my hard wood
still burning with a white
feathery coat,

egret's flapped wings
with cream dust
from a fire lit
by the wood of my body,

a steam's colorless
flame of ether
thinner
than cotton specks.

Floating down
with white butterflies
and cream moths,
all breaking
down into whiter specks

and white fruit flies
to settle
on a petrichor

from drizzles cut off
by thin streaks
and feathers of snow,

a painter spraying
the world
into light fluffy dough.

(iii)

And I rise above
that lightness swinging
heavier than
kneaded dough,

a cake too heavy
for my light tray burnt
and ruffled
into a drifting sheet
of paper
carrying a snow storm,

as I recline
on my rocker-sofa
to read deeper

into gods' gloomy lines
falling down
in flakes and white birds
blowing into silent flutes:

How painter-sprayed
snow falls
like a boulder to crush
man into a hard sofa

building a toothed rock
that won't carry his
heavy piece of night
like a blanket made out
of a whimpering lamb's wool.