Moon's Hefty Catch Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Dawn's dying
star slowly
melts into his
lantern's lips

no longer
whirring, but
settled
to a purr, a cat

chasing off
sea elves
and the sprite

sitting, plumped
down, a sinking
fig root
with a crab's grip

in the pink
cloud thawed
into cream
whitening air.

(ii)

But a breeze
pulls down
the silver sky

that carries him
on a calm sea,
his lantern's
yellow blaze

the swallowtail
to cluck him
over soft waves
wheeling

his canoe
to swollen
bellies of sea

fecund with
lurking fish,
swirling under
a new-born

moon shaving
off its feathers,
trimming
its ashy hairs

to bring out
its full round
head, the cream
yarn of a moon.

(iii)

Cream bleaching
moon, are you
the eye
to paddle the canoe

to the whirling
home of fish
deep but shallow
enough for
the fisherman's net,

a hundred
tentacles to smoke
out fish from
deep sea holes?

Are you the moon
to push the net
to hurl in the fat rock
of a fish

that wins dawn's
prize to pull down
net for the catch?

And downed
in his arrowed wish
piercing his
biceps to a full swell,

he pulls in
a heavy blue marlin
not as rocky
as a canyon's face,

but as smooth
as the moon
with a net's basket hands.