Flowering Plant Of Night Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

The thick gray trunk
carrying this tree
of night grows

through black cobwebs
and crow feathers of air,

flips out branches
to filter stony hue
and light gravelly rattles.

It's been rising
With an anchor beam
shooting out
bobbing fossil branches

to wallow towards
heights already devoured
by a charcoal umbrella.

Now I can sleep
like a log of wood
and grow into the shade
of the arm-stretching tree.

(ii)

Now I can snore off
the day's sludge
to fly into bird-nesting
trees for mumbles

and soft whispers
with one-eyed sleeping
birds watching owls
with arrows in the other
eye hurling out

sharp-tipped light to blind
the fat-eyed birds

melting into thicker dark
coats of night hanging
over lower trees
and thick-fingered pines.

(iii)

Night thickens into a cold
hearth, grows into
a cave with tight-lipped doors,

but gradually cracks
into the gold and yellow
colors of early risers
quietly reading office
notes left to fly
into breezy moments,

when eyes sip petals of light
like butterflies
from far-flung islands

sculpting rainbow hue
out of sky
throughout the day.

Out of the depth of my sleep
rolling me through
a warm furnace of sleep
with no cold fingers of drought,

I rise to my feet
from the rumbling thunderous
snore that has gripped me

as I now sip the hue
of a sky-spinning candelabra,
stars flowering early dawn.