Ink And Soot Solitude Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Behind
the overgrown
mountains,

the old man
has counted
flies
and ant steps

out of a widening
hollow
and closed-in
tunnel
of crowned

solitude
perched on
a silent
night's peak.

The old man
has fished
onyx and graphite

floating flies
out of gray ashes

and jade black
cinder
and sleeping embers
in a glowing hearth.

(ii)

He has tracked
mice fur
and insect wings
to silent air,

when low breezes
blow loud trumpets
and graphite

fibers of air weave
and stand
silhouettes

etched out from
night's pitch
boulder floating

and rolling
over
a black limestone
of night,

when a flying roach
carries the wings
of a spinning
hummingbird

and hawk flies
out of wheezing
dying fireside
of coals and dark ash.

(iii)

How many more
roaches
will he count
tonight,

as a wind flies
in hickory
and umber
speckles,

but he sees
no spiraling head
of an arachnid,

a scorpion
far-flung a buzzing
whirring tree

at the edge
of his expanding
sprawling yard?

(iv)

As night looses
its black feathers
to the gray

hairs of a galloping
dawn, Kibirpse
flies to his back

yard, an empty roost
swelling into
a home of squawks,
a file of chickens,

light up his face
into a flying grin,
its soft wrinkles

ripples in a lake
floating him
to a sun-lit morning
drowning him.