Slow Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Slow the crept life
that paddles a canoe
with breathed-out

puffs and whistles
from an oval mouth
under a soft sun

over dancing ripples
stretching hands
to a fleeing horizon,

brushing you
with an eider duck's
feathers,
and chinchilla's hair

(ii)

when gliding air
wraps you up
with squawking chicks
stroking you

with a piece
of your
beach-padded bed
with no brakes

down a level slope
to the castle
in a garden out
of reach, but within

reach of a chubby-
cheeked baby

lit by a rippled grin
bouncing on you
with baby's strokes,
hands padded
with foam and zephyr.

(iii)

Slow the slug
chasing
the garden snail

with wheels
to tuck into the snail's
feet shoed with a gale.

Slow the sloth
in slippery flip flops
chasing a giant

tortoise to fit roller
skaters into
the tortoise's feet.

With no lug nuts
and wheel studs
on my couch's
webbed feet

waddling with me
through slow life,

I fly with a condor's
wings into myself,
and wait for me

by a breezy shore
spitting out a thousand
curly hairs of a zephyr.

(iv)

Slow the sun ray
shot at the beach
to count sand grains

blown off
by a windstorm
into a warbling river.

But fastest is life
steered by curls of smoke
from a fat cigar
burning off life's boulder

with puffs
that gallop with you
to the gates
of tight-lipped death,

my rocker flowing
with a swift roaring river,
the lion chained
in its den
and tethered
to a typhoon's trunk.