The Unfinished Agenda Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

A mountain of a man,
the flying feathers of youth,
has tumbled,

and earth has quaked
beyond the edges of a precipice.

A mountain of a family
grows slim, bones

sticking out from the ribs
of a shadow, the flesh

of a dough-rising mountain
having drifted beyond
the ballooned belly
of a sea to an island of light.

The man had grown taller
than the sky
a storm wave in the Arctic Ocean
would not grab. Would not stroke.

He'd grown taller
than a Hyperion tree,

from which a nestless bird
has just dived out
into an empty bowl of air.

(ii)

All isn't shadow now, threads of light
lingering. Racing on wings.

Sun shines from the vault
of a broken sky stitched
by the unbreakable threads of family:

Reeds from dad's island
weave a nest for a family,
as a weaver bird
by the riverside floats and canoes
down life's laky river.

All is fibrous shadow from
the spine of a black back
of a night, a teacher's
blackboard, where stars jump off

from specks of chalk dust
showering a widow
with downpours flushed out
by destiny's warbling tap.

(iii)

All isn't shadow's shadow
in a widow's eyes drowned
in a geyser
only the slow breeze
of her daughter's breath can cut off.

Only another mountain of life
stands nodding
in rooted boots in a storm

not yet over, as a hurricane
plants a seedling.
Let air and sky be the tree
that grows from a mountainous bed,

from which mum strokes
daughter with fingers of sky's eyes,
a comet babbling
on an avenue by a stream of air:

Life grows with a sky-touching
castle, as dad strokes us.