Wind Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

A storm from a whizz
totters against
an arched girder

and stumbles back,
a puff, from
a cackling mouth.

Children in the yard
and pigeons
trailing them swirl
into a standing man,

thorns of pebbles
biting his soles.

(ii)

O iron frame
smashed to debris,
you bear without
a snivel
a mountain's bones.

Carrying the world
on your head
woven with girders
from a viaduct's
interwoven veins

holding a man
standing planted firm
into his trunk,
sighing only

with roots that burn
without growing
ashy gray, graphite beards.

without wincing
with the wind
ground into a breeze
and mouthy leaves.

(iii)

When a trunk's spine
hangs on
with whistling robins
in the wind,

hears only a dove's coo,
and not the vulture's
saw-on-mahogany-wood,

then the wind
jumps in from tinder's
cough,
a log roasted
in fire smoldering fire,

breathing out
only a hot wind
and breeze
from a beach shore

carrying
the gulf to fly over
hills through corridors
of clouds,

as a storm blows
into a man's trumpet,
a rumble
melting into a windy
breeze
on Zeno's back.