Goldfinch's Return Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Over the woods
the birds
swell choruses
and refrains,

some pitching
their alto,
others levelling
whistles, as others

pluck banjo strings
through an
afternoon breeze.

Through a daisy
corridor
of light puffs,

pine siskins
sail through,
cartwheeling down
deep valleys,

and wide-mouthed
yawning
ravines bordering
on a sprawling

glen flattening
out
into distant
meadows,

as whispering
sparrows
return
to high-perched
nests in jade
and olive-hued

twigs and stretchy
baboon-armed
branches
harboring only

cotton air
and beige
drifting screens of air.

(ii)

A brown-breasted
robin
tottering

and diving
into the red fire
of cactus aloe

bunched into
crawling

brown crimson
and russet
and bronze patches
of baked earth,

does not
burn into ashes
as wind blows,

but dives
out with the burnt
wings
of an ochre-beaked
goldfinch,
the guest

I've been
pulling
to my window
parapet
with seeds and buds

of flowering
plants
and a few nuts.

But the goldfinch
slithers
by in the windy
daisy screen

hanging on,
but veers off
with no stopover
on the parapet.

I throw a glance
at the parapet
swept clean and dry
by other birds,

the goldfinch's meal
evaporated.