White Cat Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

When mist molds
little form,
spinning only stuck grains
of white dust

and spreads its carpet
with floating powder,

a white jumpy cat
bumps out the closet
standing on sun's
shadow white as sky.

Under the gleaming
sun, a white cat
purrs and whimpers,
as time sniggers.

Mist speaks with
a loud voice, its mouth
floors and walls,

grass creeping to tree
roots sprayed down
to grip and clip earth.

(ii)

White voiceless mist
spins my coat,
lifts my legs through
misty air, slips
me over a fog of reeds.

White cat dresses me
with cream air,
melts my white shirt

to crawl with refugees,
their only roof
a white opal moonstone,

when fleeing mothers
and children
are dressed in misty moon
beneath twill-woven
grasses brittle as glasses.

(iii)

Mewling hands of mist
carry mums and children
across a river frozen
with biting thorny pins
of shiver and scare,

the white cat caging
them in a fortress
off the spitting mouth
of a muzzle
screened off by a chiffon sky.

In mist they purr,
As time-out buzzes and thrums
with warps of white-cat air,

time the jumping whimpering
white cat building a ship
in the bush and woody jungle

harboring mothers
and children fleeing without
their snarling legs
chasing time's cat only slowly - slowly.