At A Cliff's Edge Poem by Felix Bongjoh

At a cliff's edge
At a cliff's edge,
Tons of rock
Regurgitated by a quake
Spilling blood
And wildfires from a jungle
Of claws
Squeezing truth's throat,
There is little
Or no more space left
For drowned complacency,
A horse
To ride become a mere squeal
In a gale I can still resist.

But when the squeal
Grows the wings of a shoe bill
And turns into a nicker,
The shoebill
Also riding the same horse,
Beware of its bill
That does not hesitate to devour
The same fish
Of its sustained courage at one go,
Leaving a horse-rider, you
And me,
At the edge of the cliff's last inch
That devours
Man and shoebill and fish,
Burning the beast from paw
To horn,
As dark-grey smoke takes over.

Lean backward
On the bold horse's back,
Chase away
The shoebill still being hatched.
In the storm
Tether your horse to a tree's spine
And crawl down,
Dodging only the dark-grey smoke
Of another horse-rider
Squealing like the shoebilled horse
From which he's falling off.