Birdy Clouds Fly To Roost Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(Nightfall Over The Kalahari)

(i)

A dome is set ablaze,
flames melting its floor
into gold tossed
off a bumblebee mass.

How fire buzzes through
shrinking tree tops
still standing on floating roots,

a ship of night
hollowed out into a cabin
beaming with the glow

and ashes of passengers
rolling over
in feathered tinder

and wet basil wood
still catching and gripping
fire for a butterscotch glow

to burn hard stony
eyes of clouds
into rivers of a silvery sleep.

(ii)

Logs spread out wings
and helices of smoke
to fly with black birds

racing to catch up with flocks
of other nocturnal birds
thawed into culverts,

splitting sky carriageways
from sidewalks carrying trees
of smokey clouds
on chocolate-brown tracks.

Bunched moss- and hunter-green
leaves of clouds weave

sage and pine nests to harbor
and brush the birds
with the ash-eaten coals,

as a whirring night thickens
its coat over a forest
of dim shades spinning

heavily draped and curtained
space, passengers riding
on a slope to night's feet
in Tuscan sun cabins.