The Wild Cat Down There Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

It's beast-jumping
and air-poking windy.
Puffs and slaps of air
thicken with blades

from screaming
barking mouths. Crying out
loud into glassy
howling and groaning air.

Carrying
no dogs, but whisking
shivering whispering
half-dry leaves

and twittering birds
of banana leaves
squeaking through branches
attired in creeping,

skipping vines
with neither cell phones,
nor lap top screens,
but a sketch book of air
unbolting its sheets.

Fast air changes
its daisy pages
like the screen of a laptop

on fast-geared wheels
of feathered typing hands
on a floating keyboard.

(ii)

A gale gallops
with braying
studded booted horses

kicking the tree
I'm climbing,
two young men trailing me,
as we climb
to take photos of a glen

churned and tossed
with the ladle
of a tornado crawling up
behind us.

Making metal-bodied
electric and pylon poles
with little flesh
and tall plastic bones

do the waltz
with bobbing
and low-bowing,

head-tossing palm trees
swinging
on roller skaters,
throttled engines in their wheels.

(iii)

Climb on, crawl on up,
as a wild cat
with night-lighting eyes
breathing out flames,

gazes at us high up
the tree, as it bounces
towards the tree trunk,

opening its bump
of thick clotted roots
to the beast.

Let's hurry up
to a higher thornier point
to open its claws
at the beast, if it climbs -

if it climbs
with lightning in its
furry,
sharp-clawed legs.

(iv)

But as I'm carried way
by wild wings of fear,
the wind loses its swinging arms

to high-perched sun
etching out
on the rocky ground
a bushy bump
carrying a mane
with no lion's head,

but an old stump
rooted down earth
with no weapon, but sleeping
moss and grass,

the wild cat down there
fading with a buzzing breeze.