Memento's Whirlpool Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

The gale and hurricane,
no big flying birds,
no swooshed-out arrows from bows,

no pupil's half-scroll
with a blink on eyeball's wheels,

as the peregrine falcon
and the golden eagle spin
defeat in time's
elastic rays and race always ace.

Each cruising body,
a memento
in a whirlpool
swoops the time-keeper off

his broken trailing feet
to the sea's bush
down its floor of growing life,
the cow grazing too.

(ii)

But all life finds a roaring shore,
where debris
and pushed-back waters and winds
and storm-blown waves breathe.

Life breathes through
car-woven streets in a city jungle
and unshaven tracks
in a far-flung countryside.

Both stitch basket-carrying folks
to the heavy rope
of the breeze pulling them far off
a jungle of books and files

swimming in wallowing pixels,
the computer a commando
pinching and scratching the miles-off
loner on a farm of chores.

Everybody sprints, cruising
within themselves,
strolling outside their palisades,

their homes burnt by a blaze of thought,
the time-keeper
fiddling with a whale's blowhole
in time's beaded spectrum.

(iii)

Run after sun's ray
Fly after gale's wheezing legs
Jump at the rocket at take off

Run a race with storm
from a typhoon's hind legs:
The timekeeper harvests flowers of fish
on a bushy sea floor,

his garden onshore,
a sun ray fleeing to the valleys,
a moon buried in a lake.

Run after a blink's arrow
shot by a memento under the pillow.

Cruise after a one-shot sneeze,
your legs growing shorter
than the snail, whose memento is a zephyr.