Peeking At My Mind Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

O creeping willow
by a cinque foil
catching my jumping pupil
darting only glances
at an inner candle of me.

Let me carry hyssops
and purple hyacinths,
as I hang onto
heliotropes to weave me

into the high hill
of an orison raising me
to its peak.
I kneel on rock, my altar.

I flip open
a closely knit tree branch
in heavy clusters,

the only tabernacle
of leaves lit by crowns
of mistletoe berries.

(ii)

Is this the spot
growing the stone-trunked
tree flogged
by a storm of men

flying grackles from dark-
pupiled eyes.

How does a gaze
plant a pole
holding the spine
that never breaks
in a hurricane,

as it flips over life's cliff
to hang on
to its thin stem
in a buzzing burning wind,

a harmattan bush
pouring out
flamy entrails of a wailing love
under a sun's thorny crown

with edges of shards
flipped out by glassy
breaking air
with no ladder to reach
a cerulean sky,
when I'm risen to myself?