Waves Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

You slither in
like a thousand lizards,
but melt
into our feet

in shreds of sipping
cotton specks
and licking milkweed
from your

hairy and bearded
foam spread
into soap suds
to rinse toes and soles,

as I stand tilted
to a wall
of tumbling wind
bouncing into
a palisade enclosing

splashed silver
flowers of water
hurling me
into the sandy watered
floor of a canoe

on this sea shore
sipping rolling breezes
of messages
from the high seas,

a ship wreck
swelling a blanket
to splash wet wool
and threads

of water weaving
me into
a ship shank flung off
to lie on a shore.

(ii)

I tighten myself
into life's reef
knot waiting for the pull
to fasten loops,

a strong grip pulling
me into a wooden
bench by
a fisherman's herringbone
ribs, a slim man

paddling a canoe
with hands of storm,

ploughing the wooden
hollow
through to the shores
of a bay, as waves

pull the drifting canoe
over hills
and valleys of high
rolling waters

swelled into logs
punching keel and bow,
as waves steer
life over craters sunk
by deep sea holes.

Fisherman riding
on spades
and stormy prongs
of swooping waves

sweeping us
through to the shore
of a far-flung bay,
I breathe with one nostril,
as you fling

your paddle to cut
through a drifting sea
of slithering
lizards overgrown


into crocodiles
yawning to devour us,
as I hang onto
fondles' thin flesh,

the fisherman cackling
in the burning
fire of my fear pulling
me into no shores,

as bouncing waters
hollow me out
in a sandy canoe,
as waves splash in to lick
and rinse stony skin.