Atoms Of Nimbus Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Let sticky atoms
of night weave
a black bird
into the cream eagle

steering time
through reeds
and grasses
with mooing cows,

their shepherd only
me the sojourner
in light's castle
from a harmattan wildfire
with hanging flames

tiptoeing a green ranch
never baked
into brown layers of bread
I won't eat,

when a field of corn
and wheat grows
into a stretch of gaudy sky,
stars and birds

sticking out tongues
and beaks
sprouting on ridges' mouths

speaking with eroded lips
after thunder
and storm have sketched
out a message
from a cascade's swell.

(ii)

Who grinds night
into a powder
that brews tails of light
creeping in?

Who grinds stony sprays
of spiraling light
into the candelabra
weaving a lime flower,

when goldenrod petals
are withered
into sand and gravel
from a swelling desert

rising with wind
to build pyramids of sand dunes
on a bumpy pillow
shifting on molecules
of heavy cloudy times,

as a caravan of travelers
cleave off light
drifting beyond my bed's equator
cutting through
with a sharp sword of heat.

But I pick a black flower
from molecules
of night swung into atoms of light,
as I hang, a bird,
in a nest of thickening nimbus.