Unknown Harbor Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

As you bump through rising weeds
and stomps' high stools
and slide down
the riverway, free yourself
to a wind's pull. To a gust's wrestling hands.
Bow to a storm's tug. Bow to a thrust
from the tentacles
of a tornado's rubbing muscles.

Unglue yourself from
the sticking latex
of a tightening sweeping gust.

As a thundercloud drops low
and a thunderclap crashes
in the bowing bush
of shrubby grasses

through the debris-filled
blanket of a river,
as your canoe rakes and scoops
and chops its way

through the braided fog
and cloud and rain, whistle
with the wind the robin's song.

O canoe, slither not
through the crawling
creeks, but take me to the moor.

(ii)

O canoe, drive me down
to the river's tail,
where marshy vines and reeds
swallow all water,
opening a gate to the meadow.

There beyond the rising spears
of grass rises a rock,
but the river still runs deep.

There beyond a tree sitting,
arms stretched out to flap its wings
on broken water,
its protruded buttocks of roots
swelling miles and miles downstream.

(iii)

The clouds too fall low,
touching eyes, shutting off ears,
spraying beacons
of sprayed gems of light,

wrapping up forehead
and chest and rubbing spine
and numb breaking limbs.

Brewing broom whips
of screaming and yelping gales
to lash and bite
skin and hack a river's path.

Fog pushes its beige screen deep
into shadowy waters.

Fog plants palisades of rising frost,
creeping flying mist
taking over a free-for-all air.

(iii)

Clouds fall lower, as heads rise
higher and higher and higher,
night too lowering its screen,
scratching out stars to float in syzygy
along a rainbow's trajectory.

Along lightning's squiggles
lifted from the notebook of a plan,

the yellow midget-filled sky plate
of a nebula that twinkled
and spoke to your deaf ears last night.