train horn
the forest pool’s murky surface
stippled with bubbles
mosquitoes rising
only as high as my knees
still drying their wings
West Nile virus
missing the heart-stopping
flush of a grouse
old charcoal hearth
the last butternut tree’s
mossy corpse
Dave Bonta (bio) crowd-sources his problems by following his gut, which he shares with 100 trillion of his closest microbial friends — a close-knit, symbiotic community comprising several thousand species of bacteria, fungi, and protozoa. In a similarly collaborative fashion, all of Dave’s writing is available for reuse and creative remix under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License. For attribution in printed material, his name (Dave Bonta) will suffice, but for web use, please link back to the original. Contact him for permission to waive the “share alike” provision (e.g. for use in a conventionally copyrighted work).