New Morning Drums Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

What early palms
falling on tom-
toms, as players
land jabs and punches
on heavy hollow
wooden jars.

Drums and gongs
at early morning,
as a hammer
pounds leathery earth
with heavy fists.

Dropping pieces
of thunder
falling through
shivering trees

in a swooshing wind
slashing a drizzle
into thick
long-armed sprinkles
soaking earth's floor

as if with a rattling
and sniveling
watering can on dry leaves
swung back and forth
by a sturdy
cleaner's hands.

(ii)

Drums and jabs
on aluminum roof tops.
Not blues drumming,
no booming jazz.

But its all heavy feet
tramping through
mud
and sludge,
as frogs croak and dogs
groan and yelp.

What early juke box
and animals
hooting and flapping wings.

I'm only half-awake,
my eyelids still stitched
and woven
by gripping sleep.

I pounce out through
The corridor
and look down
the yard through the slide door.

It's not raining.
No puffs plucking
and pushing
leaves to tap
tree breaking backs.

(iii)

It's just a man
wheeling a wooden
push cart,
steel barrels of water
bouncing
from side to side,

as he tramps
on cobblestones,
putting
and fitting together
an arsenal
for a construction site.

And now I grasp
the bawling refrain
of the house-finder:

"It's a neighborhood
full of folks
facing life
with early hard punches
to cut off tons of sleep".