Cast Of Morning Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

How will the morning
be cast? An umber sheet
beneath an amber sky
turning goldenrod?

Or an anchor screen
dissolving
into ash, as it dims
into pitch and soot

and wears a slate gown
before it turns
pewter and graphite?

Sky's smoke garment
lasts beyond early morning
and creeps into afternoon,

as air is sprayed
with a flint and dove hue,
turning stone and mink
and abalone before growing
shadow, as it darkens

into charcoal and lightens
again into fog
and settles at smoke
and swinging trout.

(ii)

Sky and air, are your closet
exhausted? A cloud cloak
is sticking itself out
to float over flint air,

as lances of sunrays slowly
cut through, more rays
sweeping in with a dwindling
breeze, but sunlight
does not pick up in full gear.

Until a ball of gold sun
on the horizon
splits open into a pointed
torch, followed immediately

by a piercing flashlight
shooting its silver-gold rays
along a steady path
into a brighter tunnel of light.

(ii)

Night, which seemed
to have built a cloud tent
over the air, is now
overtaken by golden flames

of floating and flowing
sunrays, as the day clears
itself into stretched beams
and rays of sun.

Still digging out
a brighter path
to noon after darks sheets
of clouds had covered
a stretchy portion of morning.

Then a balloon
of dandelion light
floats down
lower and lower

until it explodes
into the daisy-cotton air
from a cartwheeled sun.

Does the cast of morning
point a steady torch
of sun through the flint
winter screen,

or a flashlight of sun
boring tunnels of light
through graphite screens
of winter folding up

bright rays with dark
blankets of pitch clouds,
as the morning
wheels itself into a winter night,
nobody having breathed in
a full stretch of sunlight.