Ode For A Coronavirus Worker Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

A wind binds your mask
to a patient, but your nostrils
crouch in the mask's cave

by life's megalith
measuring pace in fractions of inches.

A pad of air with fingers
also creeps with the claws
and paws of a lion's purr.

Tiptoeing more quietly
than a gust's puff
blowing a whistle with no mouth.

Playing a flute with no hole
lodging a hippo-headed germ.

No steel hollow, no cylindrical
tube in a breeze's touch.

(ii)

No vehicle's hoot flashing light
at the crash of talk with gaze.

No train's wagons bumping
Through from a flipped-out finger
quivering after the rope
of another finger flung at the eyes
for a tit-voiced winked handshake.

Let the arrow of a peek
strike with thunder's voice without
body - without the stem

of a narrow cloud falling from heaven
to take you to heaven's gate,

where your skin's thickness ends
with flashing stars
from a broken sun wheezed out
from a palisaded smile.

(iv)

Smack air. Prod it. Poke air
with a spear of hair-thin air
that pierces and tears through

the floating elephant body
of a cough with wings,
your only weapon
under a knee's choke-hole.

There's nothing a stone
lying on the ground can do,

but a brace of wind, the only
mask, can soften
the landing hammer of a knee.