Gazing At Life's Face Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

A man under the whispering
tree is peeking at the sky,
swimming with the gliding
birds, as they each do

the butterfly stroke going
their separate ways
to unknown trees on far-flung lands

that flip them back
home to nestle into reeds
and milkweed blanketing their nests.

Other birds fly over the garden
trees along paths
ploughed in the cotton air,
trajectories sketched out,

as soon as they flap
their wings and set sail
in the cyan sea of sky,

each in its floating ship
steering feathers and wings
across wind shears high, high up.

(ii)

The man is torn within
Himself between walking off
to the next island within
the garden and staying

in the warming chamber
of a dome
built by tree branches
stretching out
buzzing and whirring insects

across and over
closely woven leaves
arching down
a forest green span
like an umbrella's emerald canopy.
.
He's planted deep
into a stony garden seat, steering
his own wave-cutting ship,

as roots grow beneath the rock
seating him,

its raised edges the only wings
flying and skipping with him

into the feet of calla lilies
and creeping, jumping grasses,

gazing at strings of life
in their various paths along unknown
waves of a windy air.

(iii)

Amid flying birds above him
and skipping insects
around him, he pulls himself
out as the weakest animal

with no wing to steer his ship
full of heavy memories
of wounded and strayed friends,

many drowned beneath
whirlpools they could no longer
veer along a path of survival.

(iv)

Drowned in his thoughts
loosing feathers on their wings,
he's pulled by a drooling dove

that landed with ruffled feathers
losing afterfeathers
in a cruising galloping gale.

The bird coos coolly,
swells into its spread wings,
and sails off along a well-paved
route in a pearl air,

as the man groans aloud:
I must flip out my own wings,
As he stands and walks off.