Where The River Ends Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

In its babbling and crooning
hymn licking the belted
kingfisher's soft story of years,

it flies off in splashes.

It tiptoes the heels of lightning's
slopes galloping
on sky's horsebacks to sun's home.

O thick ropes of stringed
and beaded waters flow through
and over the feet of trees

spilling off more waters
to buzzing barrels of bees on trees.

They wear out into gossamer
straight and zigzagging lines
of glued hair and fiber
trapped in mush and sponge.

The river's spidery remnants
sip tramping feet, as life turns
worms into gluey crossed fingers,

mounds of unshaven earth
crawling with the deepest legs
to walk back on ladders.

(ii)

Splashes thin out into taupe trays
of watery grass spinning under moons
that sleep with one eye

and under sun's threads
of rays pedaled by the tailor

Beams in threshed marsh
blink, large eyes widening,
as sky lands its wings,

where an eagle finished a meal,
and a hunter clipped
the eagle's wings, burning its eyes

of death, where weeds
and loops of undergrowth
have prowled knotty life
with the fingers of forky hands.

(iii)

A river does not end
in feathery labyrinths
of marsh, but the flickers

in silvery tributaries
of dancing lightning.

Flipping over in gold sheets
hurled by a sun's closet
sparks growing from the flamy
roots of tantalum,

rosy flashes breathed out
by the prodding tongues of fire ginger,
to nestle in beams of sunflower.

And birds fly, webbed feet
spun into stars
welded from tantalum carrying

flying fireflies of sparks
to breathe in air
from winged windmills
spinning an albatross' path over a tunnel,

where death is buried
in the bony orifice
of a regolith no sword can tear through.

(iv)

Under the swimming lotus
always oiling its stretchy toes
with drops of water,
life tramps with giraffe legs

through deep incised valleys
of death, air and breath
bouncing on thin latticed strands,

where life's wings fly through
croaking frogs crawling on jumpy faces

stitching themselves back
to plum blossoms, the mistletoe
drifting towards an amaranth's feet.