Barbers For Trees And Men Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Firs and junipers
frequently pull in barbers
of wind
to rattle through
cotton and alabaster air,

trimming their leaves
to short needles
and pimpled nutty cones.

They don't let in
unannounced visitors
to storm bushes
of foliage

grown on them
with well woven
and knitted
hideouts and nook.

All year round,
they prattle with shavers
of gales
and scissors of winds
to trim off their leaves.

(ii)

But untrimmed
young men
don't shut off
all doors and windows
of their hair
to nibbling invaders,

as they let in
insects to find nests
in locks
and dreadlocks
not straightened out.

The invaders dive
into tufts and shrubs
of hair
growing to a full
bloom of bushes
for short stays.

When hairs are not
tall and curly enough
to build knotty roofs
sheltering lice and mites
in warm homes,

they stick to burrows
in follicles
and tight edges
in plain weaves
of hair to hold them tight.

But they sip little
or no sap
and nectar
from hosts of juicy scalp,
razors of sun rays
cutting off gate-
storming visitors.

(iii)

With no barbers,
and, unlike men,
the needle-flipping
and cone-
pimpled fir
and juniper trees
stay low-shaven fields

to let in
only razor-sharp
shafts of rays
and spiraling
lances of winds
to swing and brush off

their bushy leaves
to lower and lower
floors of dry
withered leaves,
warding of all invaders.