The Fisherman's Catch Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

He rises and plumps
himself back to bed
with every wave,

a tic of the brow
pulling down
walls of storm waves.

He flips himself
out of the bed,

as the sun slips out
from its shell
on a bobbing horizon.

With a tailed ray
of early morning
sun cutting

through his window
to sketch cream angles
on his beaming walls,

he sees and sizes up
every stretch of sea,
digging into armpits
of waves with no hands

to pull him into
a sharky sinkhole,
the gods pulling everyone
to a final home.

(ii)

But life itself
spins ripples
and cutting slates

of stretched winds
to slip a man
through walls of storm.

Steering high ridges
of waters out of the way,
as he dives
with his canoe

into a roaring row
of sea waves,

the angle pulling
him back
from a lurking shark,

when a tic ignites
the flame
that tosses him

onto the path
of a blue fin tuna
his net
scoops out
with a sun-rayed bow

lit by a shell fish's light
to break
into the fish's fort,

a curling wave
raising the whorl gluing
the hefty fish
more firmly than
a slipperysnail.