the cousin who once
impersonated a bear
tall tree tales
just there
a barred owl used to blink
at the rare car
dim hemlocked light
recalling my childish fear
at a bobcat’s hiss
hemlock refuge
threatened by needle eaters
I avoid looking up
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).