Between Red Coals Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

He stooped behind
a deep red earth, his hands
spiraling over red grains
of charcoal collapsed

from hard tinder burning
all night to keep
the house warm, as cold winds
stretched out icy hands

on nylon-thin skin
eroded into leafy stretched mat
mats woven out of

strands of cold reeds,
nibbling and biting him
with the low buzz
of a cold morning,
his cracked palms grown

into thin palmate leaves
spiraling over red bundles
of red coals dropping from heavy
wet logs of wood left

to bleed overnight with the blood
of red embers, flowing
through the veins of a stretched fire.

It's time to leave
the fire place with a fire
to plough through the cold life
of a morning hit
by unmelted dew on grasses.

(ii)

Waddle, waddle, waddle.
Like a waterfowl rowing
with webbed feet through a lake,
dabble through soft grasses.

Falling back in watery
waves dropping on your boots
with thick drops of dew.

Waddle through shrubs
and wild vines still sleeping
under an early one-eyed sun
flipping out only slim rays,

as Ataindum sets out
for his coffee farm behind
Boyo Mountain,

where birds whistle
and twitter and warble
and shriek out life every day
with rolling twinkling eyes.

(iii)

Waddle through life's
undergrowth,
as bundles of red cold coals -
these beaming coffee beans
hanging down to sit on his chest -
swing to the tune of a song.

O grains of red coals wearing
no hot cloaks of a hearth,
but stroking Ataindum's palms
grabbing bunched coffee beans

with a fist firmer
than a hammer's head,
as he sinks the red coffee beans

into his raffia bag
full of the red flames
of picked coffee
beans in their cloaks,

the fire that pumps life
into his rocky path steering
his miles-stretched waddles
through slippery grass
and scratching shrubs.