Brooding Poem by Felix Bongjoh

Brooding
(i)

Why are we all
birds brooding
over windy blazes
of bygones

that never hatch
chicks of now?

Fleeting fading
specks lurk
in corners and holes

and bolted prisons
of centuries
behind us

and in shadows
of millennia
that had veered

their vehicles
on a screeching U-turn.

To the flowery
and starred
garden of Adam
and Eve.

To deep parking
caves of oblivion
clothed in parched
feathers of archives,

dusty brown birds
too heavy
and cloud-coated

to grab a wheel
and steer
back themselves

to now, a giant
screen of sun swiping
our slim faces

to see the fire of now
bawling out
amid a million stars.

(ii)

It's me the great
mast of the present,
the great cream

and silver and dark
ship, sailing
on the sea of now,

everyone paddling
a canoe to a fleeing
horizon beyond

the horizon below
our drifting brow
cut off from view

by feathers of birdy
flying eyelashes.

Below the galloping
horizon unlocking
a hurricane

that shattered castles
and uprooted

the same steel forts
still guarding us
to brood over eggs

broken and never
to be hatched
on the sailing screen

of now, the wingspan
of the giant bird
of earth drifting

to glue itself to the sky,
expanding the deck
of a wallowing ship of now.