AFRICAN NOONTIDE

AFFRICAN NOONTIDE
It is no longer the cold morning air
Enveloped in thin vanishing nebula of mist
I breathe
But the strong warm opium of noontide
No I do not breathe
The earth breathes
With cotton-soft heaves
That lure the weary day to sleep
These are no strange melodies
The fluted warbled notes the trees sing
And bland warming whiffs
Soothing the flaming orifice of the harmattan
Oh the trees smile with lust
Flashing their bluish teeth
At the slavish stream now asleep
Resting her troubled heart
In the hours' bossom
The pink nostrils know no more
Of the ruinous waking air
Heavy with envenomed tongues of fitful housewives
The monster's breath it was
Drown too in the unfurling sea of noontide
Crickets sing the dizzy day away
Oh I breath and the mottled sky too!
A steel bird warms
Its metalic lungs in hazy drones...

© Ike Aro