Figures And Silhouettes Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Under this dim
translucent
screen of creeping
daylight, hurry up

to catch figures
and their sticking
inseparable
crawling silhouettes.

Switch on
sunlight's wick
to spray light

from the tall trunk
of a candle wax day.

Turn on a sun's
Crown to spin with
butterfly and petal.

(ii)

Now an indigo
butterfly
lands on the gold

yellow flame
of a petal,
a pansy cooling

off its heels,
a sentinel
to the king's door

from a garden
rolling
with spectral blazes
and beams.

On a crown
Of pansies a hundred
butterflies land
and sit, glued

to the pansies'
dimples
on their sprayed cheeks

until sailing
butterflies
and breezy flowers

spin one figure
and one silhouette.

(iii)

In the wind gusts
and coughing puffs,

I stroke
a bushy clump

of peonies
at the king's gate,
flying flowers

landing on me
with monarchs
and morphos

and skippers,
a swallowtail
trailing
a painted lady

by winged
flames of flowers
bathing
in bouncing sunrays.

Butterflies flap
their wings,
as pansy petals
spin wings,

flowers and butterflies
spinning
one and the same
feathers of petals.