Rope Of A Path Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Rope of a crawling path
zigzagging in loops
and flung down a hillside.

How my childhood
unwinds like that knotty road,
on which I stumbled,

storming up to a nest perched
uphill with peanuts
in a basket for and old man,

who pulled me up
the rope's path a zillion
times day and night.

He loved to fling and sling
me back down the hill,

as it pulled me galloping
on stone steps
planted into the hill slope's ladder.

(ii)

My bumpy hilly childhood
was a winding
shaky rope that pulled me uphill
and pushed me back

to flip over tired wheels
of broken feet, as I ran
tunneled errands through trenches
of will I always dug out,

leaving mounds of earth
and bumps of a snaky path
that devoured me
every morning and spat me back

downhill, where I spent time
tying myself with a knotty
road of memory, which I tied

myself into the bundle
of courage riding me up and down
the hill of my life.

(iii)

I still stand on a hill top
and see the taupe-brown
path unfolding
into the bottom of a cliff,

from which I tie myself
to leaves of sun
every early dawn

and ripe brightening morning
planted and sprayed
on top of a tree on a hilltop.