The Folks At The Gate Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

The flakes have fattened
into children's mini-paper kites
melting into a storm
of floating daisy air,

giving birth to cream titmice
of larger flakes
flapping tapered wings
to break themselves into moths.

Don't close the front door.
Don't seal the back
door even for a second,
as you drift behind
a shamrock screen of you,

a palisade of armored
leaves curving down
behind your frost-chewed back,

for those waiting
at your cracked gate
wince and snivel
at the bouncing wrapping cold.

Their heels are licked
by whirring snowflakes
escaping the deep drums
of their hollow ears.

The folks at the gate
bring with them pocket loads
of jewelry smelted by sun

into sweaty hands
that clasp and stick like grease
on love's pimpled skin.

(ii)

The cold folks have left
their houses open
to unclothed air, no cutting
sunray, nor sinking
deep hands of snow
nestling into rag-edged holes.

They've left their houses
open for the swift
that jumps in and dives
across through the back door.

The cold folks at the gate
waiting for shelter
have filled their chest pockets

with ribbons of flower petals
to spray on you
and fall on squatting you

for a hug with ruffled
sheets of snow on sun-lit chests
thawing no rocky ice,

but breathing
in a hearth
from a breeze's mailman

to warm up silhouettes
with a message
written in lettered stars:

(iii)

Daddy walks back home
tomorrow, a sun
on his face erasing a night

of thirty years served
in jail for buzzing like a fly,

but carrying no arrow
to dig a deep cut
now bleeding
on the accuser's cheek
with a flood of love.

The folks at the gate attired
in a gale's swinging arms,
hit hard at the metal panel.

But flowed on,
packaging only a zephyr
to fall on you
with the spinning tail
of a hummingbird,

its arrowed mouth
blowing into a trumpet
making flittering
stars dance and tumble
on your half-lit path.