Survival Poem by Felix Bongjoh

Survival

Slowly, the moon dies
In my hands
Like a white napkin gradually
Slipping into the dull
Fading hue of moments
Past midnight, the hour of rebirth.
The night's oil lamp
Portends the rabbit's cycle.

The moon's remaining crescent
Dies too, a shred,
When the hour is draped
In the cloak of a testimony
To dawn's new colors.

When the owl is at work
Hunting for the vole,
Whose flesh and blood becomes
The blood in the owl's veins,
The hour of the owl
Survives on an axis of eternity.

The diminished vole
Flips posterity like a careless
Coin, hiding behind
A pokeweed, its breath
In a nightshade's generous hands.

Today, the taste of a nightshade's
Simple fingers eats up the owl,
Flesh and blood, to spare the vole -
To ensure the vole's survival
In the orbit of continuous cunning feats.