Beaming Prickly Field Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

How did a million ants storm
our shirts growing pins to puncture
skin and flesh and blow in
warm baking and choking hot air

for a palmless massage, only prods
from hand-extending branches
and thorns pricking us, scratching us
as if to whisper into our ears.

Air is prickly and itchy, heat
sinking right to our bones parched
in our flesh like dry sticks
bundled and left to breathe in rays
shot by an expanding bow of sun.

Brushes of sun also soften varnish
on leaves and flowers,
scrubbing them to a sparking beam.

Shinning them with gold
from expanding shafts of sun
leaking out of hidden mines
in winzes of thickening slabs of air.

(ii)

Bulbs of bushland weeds
sketched out on wide flags carrying
yellow blossoms and climbers
in a towering smoke of orchids,

red, crimson and garnet flowers
burning in a drifting hearth
of petaled wings of coals in the air

breathing out light fog and mist
over cactus pears bleeding
in a ripening bloom
under late dawn's scarlet
robes of rays swinging above.

Cactus leaves' pricking winds
and stormy palms of leaves
also swell out emerald flesh,
each leaf a bat to toss muscled winds
but not the buzz of bees.

(iii)

The green field is a rectangular classroom
beaming with stretches of sky
losing color - like a blown-out chameleon -

to the silver and bleached linen
of a sky flipping over pages

to a wide marginless space to carry
arches and sharp angles, as the sky's tree
of wallowing silver touches sky's floor.
Rolled out in rows and columns,
the green leaves sit like students
in green uniforms

taking down notes to guide landing
cockatiel and cockatoo
trailing a lost rainbow, as canine-beaked
red wounds on prickly
pears, bark at the latecomers.