Bow To Every Wind Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Bow to every wind that brushes
you, for it would have struck
with the flying tree branch sticking out
sharp molars and sinking canines.

The wild dog would have shredded you
into a gale's whistling petals
of a flower shooting into a jumping tower
that was never mulched to sprout,

but bounced into light from the jungle
and braided bush of circumstance.

Nod to voices in every storm that slashes
you, as your feet take root
in a sinking hole, for a hurricane
with its wild hands and rake-edged wings,

would have flung you like a pebble
into a widening gorge, a crater's mouth,
pulling you down into a pit of red flowers

to burn in the garden of Eden,
where winds still whistle with hissing snakes.
When lions roar in sky's roof,

the burrowed home of a crater is a fenced
dome, a giggling hyena in the wind
the mouth that flips out
no greeting hand, but the storm
that melts you into a bleached cloud.

(ii)

In the dangling nest of a wind,
bow to its fibrous fingers; rub its foam-filled
stroking palms spiraling you up
the singing arms of a tree rising to a tenor.

Nod to a wind's bass running
through leaves interwoven with stems
and tall shrubs amid flowers
and hue-frocked birds chirruping tunes.

And flee from a crackle down a slope,
when a wind's song folds you up into a log
stretched out sleeping in a bower,
for a sigh and whisper from the crackling tree
could land on you with the boom of a boulder.