Message For A Song Thrush Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Let a breeze give you
a swagger before
you fly in your gray
and brown speckled coat.

Fly on spidery
threads of cream weaves
in their float

and bloat, as arms of air
lay back to let you
wheel on in their waves.

In your last flight,
I saw you paddle through
fibers of silver

and beige clouds
devoured
by cotton masses
of whiter kite-winged clouds.

Over the seas
some ten thousand
feet above
in your flying vehicle

throttling your feathers,
as you flew,
you dived down
to this orchard of apples

floating you through
in your wings of air.

(ii)

You found a couch
amid crowns woven
from reeds and milkweed

and these dry leaves
paddling your feathers

in the whispering wind,
as you sang
in the raised heights

of wind-lifted leaves
to have a bite
at red and yellow apples
you nibbled off

amid darted glances
at Ngam, the farm owner,

who swung in his rocker
flowing and drowning
in your new symphony song,

as you scooped out
all the flesh
from the apples
and gulped them down.
.
(iii)

More than the jerky
throat drums
of your sneaky friend,
the flowing pigeon

walking on springs
like a gray smoke
from a golden flame,
you swim your way

through grass brushing
your toes like a king's.

You sang your way over
through clarinets
of whistling ringing air
and harmonicas

of a ray's plucked
and brushed strings of hue

mouthed and blown
by rainbow lips
riding on sidewalks of sky,
as you spiraled
on a carriageway of air.

Let cloudy feathers
of air be your new track,
as you pierce
a smoky nimbus to find
gleaming golden apples.