Grandma's Field Of Candle Lights Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

The farm was a sea of vines
and ferns brushing toothed and whorled
leaves lit by jatrophas burning
amid red flames of tortoiseshells,

cocoyam leaves small green
umbrellas placed on their canopy tops.

Sparks of bees and wasps
burred with winds sailing through
leaves and twigs, and leaning

tired bobbing grasses
jumping out of their canopies.

Often skipping with grasshoppers
bouncing back from high
jumps, as praying mantises took
to wheels flying in mid-air

to land on narrow strips of dew-glowed
leaves. On air-polished reeds.

(ii)

And on tiny flames of wildflowers
that burnt them to ashes
weaving misty spiders in thick air.

Fingers from creeping stems
curved and coiled through
tiny arrows of flames, yellow needle
leave flowers shot out

to grate mum's palms and forehands,
as she wore chains of tears

hanging down her face,
tearing off gloss
out of the expanded sky she wore
from forehead to cheekbones

lighting her up like an actress
sculpted out
by a limelight of leaning grasses.

And red beacons of wildflowers
switching on torches
beneath her feet that read every scribble
of her glowing wrinkles
crowning her with a queen's bonnet:

Her face was a stretched-out field
of candle lights burning with a labyrinth of silver
delta streams emptying
salty waters into her mouth,

in which her tongue swimming
all day long did the back stroke
and toweled off as she rolled,

and chewed only candies of muttered words
drizzling quietly, quietly,
as they bounced off in the air from
a towering rooftop of love.