Time's Extending Bridge Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Flash back the ray-stropped sword of lighting
that tore open the sky into a leaking
reservoir. The slithering snake
that melted off a cloud and flushed out

sky's silver arrows to drop and bounce
as we fled for shelter still wriggles
about, creeps off and on again and lurks
in a bush of clouds, a forest of a sky

waving black clouds, as the chimed time
for the meeting across the bridge
draws close. And a snake-tailed wind blows.
Time is the bridge we must cross.

Toss that snake of lightning off sky's screen.
Run at its heels and grab it with
handling forceps - and the sword-lipped will

to freeze time drawn out into the thin
and stretchy latex fiber of a thin cloud
crawling back, spider and scorpion to a nimbus.
O time binds us with chains.

(ii)

Time is the bridge we must cross, a deluge
roaring underneath, winds whistling
as they dent and crack an abutment
standing with his soldier's hand poked at his face.

Hissing snake-lipped winds blow through
our forest of books, stems and grasses
tall stacks of files spinning in feathers of dog-eared
sheets. Let's grab time by its tail, its forked
head, the beast to melt us into clouds.

Time is the bushy bridge of cars and trucks
we must plough and scoop our way
through woolen ropes and metal chains
of bike riders and jeweled pedestrians
tramping and scurrying off for meetings like us.

Its breezier now and we must bundle
the papers, wriggle through a jungle of cartons
still growing old sheets and flashy pamphlets.

(iii)

In time's narrow strait, how do we weed off
wings of dossiers, when only spines
and crow tails of ruffled files must be pulled out?

Of course, we're wallowing through pixels
to pinpoint the trenches, where documents
have taken shelter, fleeing roaches
of commercials crawling through the screen,

diving off wasps of a blackout that will sting us
if a finger drops on the brittle head
of a button on that pulls a trigger at other players.

As time wallows with leafy pixels on a screen,
growing an unwanted garden
of shrubby sketches to crawl with caterpillars,
acrobat ants and rover ants of scripts,

it's time to take off for the car,
as we still knit and stitch ourselves into a stampede
of bird-headed trotting folks trudging

behind the feathers of time on a popping
crackling collapsing bridge.