A Hummingbird's Song Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Hatched from
a strip of stratus,

I live woven
Into myself,
a cream cloud
on a pad

threaded with fibers
of fondles
and gluing strokes
of silk-crowned mum,

life's stretchiest
cushion and diaper

raising me
into a needle-
pointed
arched bullet
of a bird.

I catch kisses from
the nipples
and mouths
of hugging flowers.

(ii)

I lean on stars
flickering from
brushy balls

of milkweed
and leafy
antimacassar

hanging from
the a leafy
sofa built into

twigs in my chateau
of feathery
fiber and leaves,
mum's palm pat,
a soft-flowing wind

breathing out
mountain zephyrs
that brush
and rub me
with feathers of love.

I live stuck
to grins and beams
from a bobbing
antenna in the hands

of a streaming
breeze floating me
on life's sails
steering the drifting
hull of my nest,

the high-decked ship
paddled by air
and dripping cream
from light.

(iii)

The humming bird
of me spins
a cotton ball of me
in a palm

closing up into
mum's chimneyed
fist, the squeezed
fondle from
a tongue's tip.

In a typhoon's
arms of love
spilling drizzles
of nectar,

I rise every day
from mum's womb
of glossy petals

flipping out elephant
tusks and spiky
porcupine quills

to face the world's
roar, falling with
boulders of a sky
I catch

with a short stretchy
breath flying out
from a popping flame

glowing with silver
feathers and threads.