From A Rebirth Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

On your way back
from Spring's rebirth,
I heard you
whimper and snivel

over a rose
of a wound carried
by a gored leg,

a man wincing
and wailing
in a shrill piercing voice
shattering sky's
glassy tray.

You wriggled out
of the man's pain,
as you landed
on my window slab,

a sharp sun
etching you out,
as you closed in
to my wall's
rocky face, its chin

dissolving
into the shadow
of my window slab.

(ii)

Robin, my eyes
followed you,
as you took off
from a shamrock
orchard

through a frolicking
wind-spun
hyacinth on a west
lime strip

that shot you
with a tornado
leap of a flight

up a harlequin
tree branch
to higher stories of air,

until you reached
hundreds of feet
above a tower's peak,
and dived
into a silver space

and slowly dissolved
in the mouth of a red
grey cloud
wearing your outfit.

(iii)

You spun and got
devoured by a patch
of viridian cloud
beneath a scarlet
bleeding stretch of air,

and jumped down
towards a tree
branch in my garden
and veered off
to my cream window.

Your flame-lit
slobbering mouth
carried
the glittering torch
pointing to my home,

as you rose up there
swimming
in the babbling stream
of your tears
under the sun.

Here you stand across
my window pane,
a singing panel
alerting me to your arrival.

You can have those
seeds in the earthenware
pot sitting next
to you. They'll shoot you
back into the highest air

to deliver you
to your fledglings
singing soft songs for you

in your fort
of thick roots and reeds
woven into sisal fiber,
a house
for stars amid fireflies
twinkling with posterity

high above your friend,
the lotus
sitting on marsh
to hatch,

as new life warms up
your glowing nest,
the wounded soldier
growing more seeds
for you, his rose

growing into a floating
winged flat spider
of a painless scar.