Maracas Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Foremothers
taught us
to shake the gourd
to listen
to sandpipers
within

and the curlew
that dances
in its
bottom,

when robins
of temper have
flown off,

leaving us to rattle
with the voice
of a maracas.

Fell the tree
hanging over us
with storm
of ourselves,

when a breeze steers
us to the banks
of a river
rattling and rumbling
with the debris

of our stony tears
bumping against
old rock

through slithering
tracks than run
into mountains

our canoes veer off
for a turn
into a deep gorge
of our cracking
selves, as we pull

a heavy tree
from its roots
dragging
cobblestones
and tumbling blocks

from buildings
ourselves,
our bones covered
with wood cladding
clattering

and squawking
in our deep gorge,

when moments
drizzle
and spread
into hail stones,

only to pour
down in rattling
rainstorms

of our broken selves
standing
without baobab roots
under a banyan tree

swooshing us down
to get flushed
by the fat arm of grief.

(ii)

In clattering
flustering moments,
hands stuck
to the maracas
like a palm crab,

grab the bamboo's
mouth
to clang and jangle
with a shaker gourd

rattling with pebbles
and the beans
and grains
to be sowed
along with sprouts

in a cornfield
filled with dry stalks
of rattling maize

losing its voice
to a maracas steering
streams
and rivers of tears

under the heavy tree
of ourselves weighing
down with branches
on toothed bamboos

and hollow gourds
we rattle
and clatter without
shaking off
roots of a stormy grief:

Fell that tree
in a storm
to crackle with the fire
that burns out
dark, onyx clouds.