Trumpet Of Endurance Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

What wind blows through a trumpet's mouth
rising higher than swords
of elephant grass stems raising a zillion hands

from a bush's interwoven purity,
a finger-sipping baby sticking out the flame
of a tongue to whimper with the mountain stream
meandering through lurking reptile's path?

Let the trumpeter swan blow
my trumpet of purity
to sweep through muffled tones of doubt,

the baobab showing how
you stand on your head flipping out limbs
to the caved-in sky,
hands and feet touching sky's bumped-out face.

(ii)

Who does a baobab's somersault -
standing like a fat-trunked rock waving
taupe and black and gray flowers

of endurance under a gray sky folding up
into clouds - holds out a sturdy pole
to knock out lightning's blade.

Who spreads out a thousand hands
of raffia to spirals of dust and sitting clay
strokes a cactus' fat flesh

on an eagle's winged spiral through
a typhoon with the claws of a jack saw
in a rock-sized muscular grip.

Absence is the rock sitting on us, pressing
down slabs of our breath as we choke
in its tightened strings and chains.

When a wind blows a trumpet through tall grass
and you in your cactus flesh walk into my arms,
the locked padlock of absence will break into you
in the canoe of a gaze, a sun's ray
hollering to the gong's mouth: "It's me".