They're Close Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(song of the vigilant combatant)

(i)

Stones and rocks
are tumbling under
elephant legs
tugged in tree trunks of boots
brushing the knee cap.

Listen. Soles land
on the pebbled ground
like hammered
gloved and stropped knuckles
on stretching leather drums.

They're close
by the hillside after
the river flowing

with the sun's flowers
and swelling butterflies,
particles of moths
melting into shadows of dots
and commas.

Their shadows swim
in the river like strayed tadpoles.

Specks of debris
also fly and float
over the river's mirror

drifting with the splayed sun
handing over mid-day's bell
to ring with a prancing dusk.

(ii)


They draw closer and closer,
sneaking on sand
with piping plovers
on a sprinting beach,

following a fire
of ants, a trail of wind-drifted
cinders crawling

in straight lines from coigns
of the beach's
water contours slithering
under far-sighted

palm trees telling them
we're heating up in hearths
and craters
down the wobbling valley.

(iv)

Watch out, when those
men arrive in files of ants
with eagle wings
and pouting mouths

we'll not, O we'll not
be poked and stroked
by their silhouettes,

as they creep to our throats
with ripe muzzles.
They're right here -
close by our waists and shoulders,
stroking our muzzles,

those snake-eyed traitors
among us, who'll soon
be smoked out to melt into mist.