Whorls Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Fold over into
you by the shore
of whorls

sinking you
into inner bowls
of splayed you.

By the shore
flowers kick air
in gusts of wind.
And roll over
Into their chests.

Green leaves
in the lifting,

punching wind
swerve round
withered leaves.

(ii)

They veer round
rattling stalks
shedding off

scrolled pinnate
leaves, as grasses
fold into
themselves.

and sepals
whorled into fields
of a slithering

dance and prance
steered by breeze
flipping fingers

and gale legs
kicking old scrolled
petals into whorls.

(iii)

I stand curled
Into me
on a tapered
stiff stone

wind-sculpted
to swirl ad twirl
into squiggles

breathing out
bubbles to spin
over waves
slowly drifting in.

(iv)

Whorls on my shell
cruising with the slow
pace of me,

a snail filtering
air shot between
broken pebbles
and sands
splitting into pads of silt.

From a spiraling
whorl on drifting waters,
let me peek at

the snail in its fort,
a still whorl
clothed in pads of sand
between thicker,

porous blankets
of sand
breathing in brushes

of soles from
passing tiptoeing
and tramping feet.

(v)

Of all the architects
of life, the snail
soars far above,

building his house,
key and lock

glued to his deepest
chamber in a fort
stuck to its rolling wheels.

Let a snail teach
man in his
hundred-eyed castle,

tightened life
is best lived in a home
gluing itself
to stretched bone
and air's spine.