Feather Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

A light flat piece of silver
spinning carob or tawny vanes
holding onto a bird, other leaves
shredded into air

gripped by the downy barbs
and afterfeathers
of a choked wild sneeze.

Drizzles of cotton hairs shoot
through to a pen-holder's flaming nib,
a quill pouring out

foggy blobs, the nib so drunk
it throws out lakes on a sheet
too thick to cut through

mists from a tongue that rattles
out a bee hummingbird

to sing with glided squiggles,
as a feather's lyric bounces on.

(ii)

A feather spins the quill
to point arrows with scribbles

at the animal the falcon
eyes for a catch when a star
is ripe with a ballooned sun

it splashes to blindfold
a chirping cricket

covered by the feather
of woven grass and gossamer threads
holding overlapping leaves together,

when birds in flocks
are steered
by a single feather of air
through clouds thawed and melted
as a gale whispers and roars.

(iii)

Then the lyric writer adds
more cotton to a vane,
as a storm grows stronger

than the wings of hawks
and herons flapped and slashed
by saw-edged rays of sun,

as the birds fight over territory
they never conquer
without the stiff feather of a schema

sketching a stretched labyrinth
a feather must stick to
for a wing to blow a winning trumpet,
when an alto carries a bird,

a fledgling with no feather
plucking feathers from the tornado
that lands it in its towering nest.