Drowned In Dust Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(song of a hazy woman)

(i)

This mat of earth
tosses dust
into my wet riverine
eyes of floods

disemboguing
into a swampy pool

bathing me with waters
from a geyser
spurting with hot tears

from a mother
dressed in the mist

of faded nylon veils,
a haze of beige dust
her only head gear.

Let the hat
spin the safari hat
of sun
tugged down
her shrinking temples

not slowing down
her hoe
bouncing off rock

and misty flying hands
of dusty lime stone
bleaching her
into a dissolving of smoke.

(ii)

The dusk-bleached
woman wriggles
into herself for not seeing

her son return
from the deep gorge
and tunnel of day,

as light crushes sun
and cloud
into the charcoal
powder of late dusk.

O rolling strip
of sand and gravel
weaving
a rug to stretch out

a running,
jumping shadow
under sun's mirror.

(iii)

Are these ropy phalanges
arms to hug him
with umber
and tan waves
of swirling and settled dust.

Whimpering loud
with a wind flying
and growling

through stones
raised to their high stools
by hands of woven sand

and kicks of gale,
as they dribble past trunks
shedding singing
cracking, brittle-throated leaves.

(iv)

O swift breeze,
rake and brake
with forked rays
of evening sun.

And scoop out
the mooing chunk
of beef for my sniveling son.

I carry these
heavy stalks and drooping
leaves behind me

with all the storm
and low bird hum
of air draining itself
of feathers
and croaking dry leaves

and twitter
of life in the mountains
built of rock

and blocks molded
out of a regolith.

I lean on them,
and grow into a speck
from this mound of dust

clothing me
with a dusty floor
of my genuflected
bobbing torso

filtering out
no beefy chunk
that drowned my son.

I wait for him
to land in a parachute
of dust

swallowing
man into the dust
that thrust him into life.