Morning Light Poem by Felix Bongjoh

Morning light

by Felix Bongjoh


A sturdy ray of light gathering some hype
Like a fleeing zebra's last hind stripe
Flashes through the bleaching morning;
Takes away the last shades
Of moments fast turned mist in grades
And fading skinny silhouettes of the hour.
And the world phases out the sour
Taste of its usual mood of mourning.


Shredded shafts of light trail
On the carpet and spot-paint walls with frail
Patches subdued by an intrusion. A mere delusion.
Let it not be the spirit's denudation.
The living room resists in shy frowns
The bunched lines piercing firmly through gowns,
Through a curtain's symmetric fissures,
Leaving soft shades in seizures,
In one-eyed corners behind the couch
Where tiny bugs feel happy to crouch.

Soon narrow paths of illuminated tones intersect
Each other, make sharp turns to dissect
Gloom and shoot through inner doors
To orbits of intimacy, unfolding silence
Through the undressed bareness of corridors.

In their naked attitude the sharp voice of reverence
With high-pitched sheets. Lighting up the crib,
A crisp transparency on a purposeful gib,
A subtly evolving complexion of light:

O dim you tone. O shimmer. O gleam. O glimmer.
Glow but do not burn the silver's shimmer,
The sleeping baby in her own galaxy of dreams.
Twinkle but tickle with the glee of your beams.
Touch not the eye as you peep through
The nearby tree and its generous branches too,
Into which the baby grows in her sleep
Until she bears fruit in her dreams,
When moments stream, no longer steep.

And when in a pitch of ecstasy, screams,
As the fruit ripens into a golden glow,
The baby half-awake in paradise,
Murmurs silently in her dazed flow.

Light, shimmer not any further. Slim down
Over this crowned knoll of the town.

Narrow the breadth of your path
To lower the honed intensity
Of your might. Let your eyebrows droop
Until a shadow grows a troop
To overcome the recalcitrant shiny intruder
Growing louder and louder
In heavy boots in their tramping density

Now yelling in the strident voice
Of a moon-phased centuries-old choice:

Here I come, that ray of light
That drops with the first fruit
Disentangled from a tree branch,
The singular bell of life's vast ranch
When a baby's first cry at light
Is the day's foreshadowed glamour at its shoot.

And unlike a gob of tear hanging on the baby's cheek,
A silvery trace of the day's innocent transparency,
You'll struggle with your own dim light in your mind's creek,
Crawling desires in wriggling circles in a forced ascendancy.