The Mountain Cavern Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(to the memory of Joseph Bongjoh)

(i)

I'm just a ridge
in one of mum's staggered furrows
in a hoe-tilled
field of mulched beds,

from which we sprouted
and grew
to the contours of Eris.

Mum's nest-filled
tree branch palms

closed for a hug, but sky-open
with malachite
wrapped in a shore's breeze,

thrust her into the glowing nest
that cradled us
in a deep trunk's cot.

It flipped you out
into a world
the size of a speck,

a fairy fly
still sparkling brighter than a star.

You're the rooted cavern
in a shelved rock
stuck in chamber,

the mutter in a shell-room
on a mountain's crown,

which took me
to the bushy edges of sun.

(ii)

You're the mountain
etched out
into a crawled-back promontory,

from which you pointed
down across the sea.

To blankets of waves rolling
into steady ripples
by a shore of cotton bales,

the pad that wiped off
all nails and needles
from the leaking flames of fishermen

bouncing back from ocean towers
of water raising storm wave trees
for fish to slipped off,

as a rolled-out net
crawled like a hundred taupe crabs,

but drew in only a thin fin
of feathery scales.

(iii)

Of all the fruits we picked,
as mum scooped out
marshy clay from the dunes of rock
and gravel

under the gavel of sun
and over-flooded rivers
for a living, muttering incantations,

I remember
a harvest of cushioned places
as catechumens
in God's farm of knees

nailed down a hill's staircase
like a twig's leaves
still kissing their petioles.

(iv)

From a deep valley
in a cottage
in the reeds and feathers
of a bush's bower,

you surprised
a younger sister and me

with a home-crafted
mum-made
meal you'd carried

like candy glass and crystal eggs
to be hatched

as we'd just received
our first holy communion:
We were as light
as the ashes and dust,

from which we'd been made -
chicks bouncing
on catapulted legs.