Flowers Of Palm Arms Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Dwarf palm trees
quietly waving
scarlet leafwings

to fly with
other red butterflies,

clustered
nuts stuck out
with wings,

their pointed
heads beads of
stringed
cardinals
and red avadavats,

ruby and red
diamond stars
twinkling
and flipping out

tapered flowers
of nuts,

as they beam
and gleam
on your waist.

(ii)

In an expanding
storm of seaweed
and pine hue
crawling with wings
and feathers,

your low hanging
branches
lie stiff
and curved in,

as they curl panels
of an umbrella,

its outer canopy
dressed
in pinnate leaves
of plumes

flipped out
on moss
and juniper
flying gowns.

O palm branches
curved over
clustered flowers

of beaming
nuts to spread
and spray
spine-breaking

stretched leaves
arching to crab,
bowing to your nook.

But not flipping
over to abandon
you in your
podgy trunk

beaming
with garnet
and mahogany nuts.

(ii)

Palm tree,
Your clusters of nuts
cling
firmly to you
like sun-burnt finches.

They clutch
like babies
wrapped up
in loin clothes

of pearl
and cotton air
under
a shouting sun.

And your nook below
shelters folks
with the juice

of red palm oil
to feed them,
as the sky gleams
with a deep red.

(iii)

Red hands
standing
and flipping out

your flying flowers
of clustered nuts
stuck together

with a soft
fire of dark red
balls with
pointed heads.

As you twirl
into your
shamrock and deep
green branches

wagging tails
of the gaudy parrots
pecking
at your thousand
nipples of nuts,

let your latticed
green branches
shelter
your deep red hue
of nuts

and wag tails
filtering
red sun
into oil to fuel
the engine

of folks
that sowed you
into taupe earth

to spin them
with ploughing hoes
and trowels for
stretchier palm fields.