Butterfly In A Blue Plate Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(crafted after a visit to Arched Rock on Mackinac Island, MI)

(i)

What if I scale down
a volcano's croaking mouth,

life hooting and screeching
with century-old owls drunk
with their own voices.

Chrome hands of sun
woven into rags
of moonlight from a splayed moon,

you brighten a thousand stars
of time-spewed debris.

O yawning space of door and gate,
you ride me down
a time-scooped bowl,

the deep mortar
a pilgrim's
pestle-legs pound and grind

until dust melts
into dashes
and hyphens of ash above
to snatch
a sky-bound epithet,

the Tiffany blue translucence
of a honking beast's mouth.

(ii)

My shadow is torn
into your heavy beard
tailored into a thicket.

Wobbling weeds rise to a climb,
as snaky dreadlocks bite air
and nibble off old chalky coats.

And jump over wigs of creeping grass.
And flip over
broken spines of rays
to kill dark shrieking corners.

Here sit particles of history
on pimpled earth.
Here lie dead crabs of earthenware
dispatching claw-scratched letters
to a light-sneezing sun,

feathery air flying off in drizzles
of sparrows to nests
in limestone cradles wearing turbans.

A follicled garden
breaks through
basket-filled curios handing
down artifacts' rays.

Like rays of pilgrims,
bees have run races to Neptune,
diving back
to sip petal-wrapped fingers.

(iii)

A zoomed-in peek
shoots me
through an arched window:

A butterfly settles
on a blue plate of water,
spread out, free style,

into a sea's soft-toned
cyan embroidery folding over
the face of age,

a nylon bedspread stitching
a thousand wrinkles
of soft puffy waves
piloted by a million breezes,

the deep stretch of time
into a horizon
backpedaling the present into the past.

(iv)

I've seen a rocky screen of life
unhinge its armpit,
scanning the wallowing sails
of a fisherman's boat,

those wings of a hawk butterfly
pulling back buffalo horns of life

from the melting ripples
of a hippo
riding a tree-tall giraffe.

A zebra's dress
is cast by a cloud-piercing sun,

no crossing path,
but a splash,
water hatching a giant spider,

antlered death ushered in,
a rock-crowned mountain
of a capsized boat
swallowing tentacles of rivers on a lake.

(v)

And the butterfly sails off
to the distant island of lost sight:

I weave myself into dreadlocks
of flying parched leaves
and the wings of tall stooping vines,

the giant hawk of sight
scooping out
pieces of the wreck and clouds.

From unwoven silver
stuck into bunches of emerald fibers,
ballooned waters stretch out
into magnolia-cup waves:

I wonder why dented geography
has never taught us
the world is not round,
but a blubber fish's untrimmed mass of clay.