Bye Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)


Bye with a breath
costing only half a dime,
plucking
no penny from me.

As I buy with hard cash
and borrow
no stringed, holed
elastic time
to wait for you.

And scream for you
across gossamer
hanging screens
of memory,
and withered flying leaves
on a tall tree.

Branched and twigged
into whispering
and twittering nests
of cooing and cawing voices
hanging over
and on a thick trunk

grown and bearded
over flames spinning
us together on old,
deep-rooted trunks.

We carry ashes of now
still bled by the hard
tinder of times
past and glowing,

the standing timber
tree in flames
of a sunny bright day

under the beaming
pearl air-striking hand,
when I met you,

stretched-out moths
and birds flying
and floating
between you and me.

(ii)

Bye carrying
a gabbro weight
of a silhouette not bought
with breezy winds,

but at the chrome
and gold price
of an absence beneath
ocean waves.

Behind rising walls
of mountains
across stretched eyes
of memory,

mounted on galloping
horsebacks,
the only riders,
you and me riding side,

as we glide
past each other
on stretched balloon strips
of stretchy time
ridden on higher skybacks,

as we keep on
climbing step by step
tall ladders
of memory collapsing

only to rise back
on feet tucked to wheels
rolling back
and forth across burning
flying feathers of time,

until we have only
ashes to blow
into each other's face,

as we say bye
over a storm wave of drifting time
over zephyrs
on the shore of our absence,
a plenum
with a deep hollow.