Bloated Egrets Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

It snowed cotton specks,
flying flies and white
ants. Thick cream pith ashes
of snow also dived down
flapping off powdery wings.

Until air was filled with
hovering dots and commas
enunciating squiggles
of locutions from the gods.

Spitting out milkweed lumps
of dirt from a cornsilk sky
thick with a pasted cloud
and a sitting rooted hazy sheet.

Bloating and splitting
into dropping dots
stitched, glued and woven
into a wooly blanket
stretched out, swinging
to the borders of sky's bed.

(ii)

And this morning, trees stood,
flipping out white hands,
heavily clothed in cream
and daisy flannels of snow.

That only thickened
under a spinning alabaster
light from a sneezed-out sun.

The trees grew fatter
with bulging pearl muscles,
as sunrays grew lighter,

its flickering fingers massaging
snow to turn brittle,
porous and hairy with fibers
and broken woolen lumps
of sticky gripping snow.

(iii)

A cream tit hovered
and perched on a thickly
snow-clothed tree
branch stretching fingers
of dry twigs and withered leaves

to jump down by my window
with flying white egrets
heavily muscled with the flesh
and gripping feathers of snow.

High up the tree, the tit
with light scratches of its toes
bulldozed heavier lumps
of snow to fall down

with scores of wing flaps
in a pushing and pulling wind.

Until earth's floor grew
grassy, as white and cream
bloated egrets skipped out
of white grasses of snow.

And crawled and sprawled
across the taupe lawn
sleeping under awnings
of hung-down stitched cream leaves
heavy with sprayed, glued snow.