More Than A Routine Catch Poem by Felix Bongjoh

More than a routine catch
On the far south side
Of the mountain's
Webbed foot of old huge duck waltzing away
In the distance,
The sun
Polishes the Atlantic's belly
With the ray
Of an adroit painter's brush,

Lights up a candle ball
On a punctured wobbling expanse
Of sparkles,
The fisherman's net, the Sirius
Ripe enough
To draw a basketful, catch of catches.

Rings of sun
Collapsed
By whimsical leaves idling on a bank
From gazing trees
Weave ripples into a floating plate.

How do I knit
A pattern of hope out of the dancing layer
Too flat for me to decipher
The lines
Of a huge floating palm
In plastic form? Leaving me no chance to tell
Warp threads of water
From the hopsacks they crochet?

How can I tell
With a fortune teller's eye
Inspired by zodiac's torch what fortune not to torch
With a hope
As hot as blacksmith's metal
In bellow's mouth?

I think we've reached that spot of water
From which gold-muffled fish
Is usually drawn,
From which to catch the mysterious
Flamboyant king fish
Wearing a moon-lit night's stars
On scales
Molded on
The giant like gem pieces.

But here, here,
After a muscle-mustered
Sweat-showered effort
Gauged only in live hippo's flesh,
Our net grooved
Into fortune's corner is rising, rising,

Rising heavy
And heavier or light and lighter
With some bullion of gold?
Or some feathery
Entanglements of feathery fish?

Pulling and pulling
A net light with a few albacore and alewife
And - a scarce… Conch Shell Blue
Which has never shown up
Among the finds
Of busy beach boys combing the shore
For shells
When they are already empty shells
Of themselves - having found no shell,
Not even a spidery piece -
Willing to rob a bank
For a treasure not worth a cowrie.