Category: Photos

See also my Woodrat photoblog and my Flickr account.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Holidaisical

which naked branches make
a paper wasp’s antennae twitch

out scouting for a nesting place
hind legs outfitted in safety orange

at the top of an oak curled
like a scroll around its missing heart

two flickers perched a foot apart
engage in a bowing contest

a green sweat bee wallows
through the wind-blown hair on my arm

fresh from a blossoming shadbush
that bridal delicacy

a gnatcatcher’s two-note song
sounds both necessary and sufficient

i step aside for a dust-devil
made of dead leaves

it careens off for another hundred feet
and rises into the canopy

as if the devil intends to re-leaf
not with new growth but old

a project as certain to fail
as May Day will come

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Present Tense

disoriented by the mass slaughter of innocents
or the world as so many assumed they knew it vanishing
one might resolve to live only in the present tense

one could pay attention for example to the constant embrace of clothes
how air and water flow around and also through us
the way sound waves break against our eardrums
the proprioceptive intelligence of the feet

all the machinery of being human humming away
even for humans who lose or misplace their humanity
they must retain a muscle memory of how to crawl
the ground by and large continues to hold them up
lightning fails to edit them out of the story
prayers do not curdle in their unremarkable mouths
they fish with gilded forks through a bitter stew

shielded by double-glazed windows from the calls of birds
and soon enough the thunderous love-songs of 17-year locusts
currently still as pale as an army of spirits
tunnelling up through roots and rocks and mud

Posted on by Dave Bonta

The Cruelest Month

falling into the open
mouth of silence
vulture shadows

circling among boulders
of off-white quartzite
grown long in the tooth

fingers of ice linger
in the afternoon shadow
on a rock-walled well

where my face looms
among the far more
circumspect trees

some of whom are dead
but still standing on wind-
toughened roots

others yet to succumb
to infestation or pestilence
late frost or drought

here in the east
we can rarely climb
out of our own lives

one cannot vanish
into the thin air afforded to clouds
or the eyebrows of insomniacs

those who like it cold
have nowhere to go but north
we’re all migrants now

and our first green is in uniform
an antispring of plants
no native bug will touch

descending the mountain
i weave through a thorn scrub
wrought by forestry

and trillions of dollars
swifter than thought
encircling the earth

the silence broken
by a blue-headed vireo
singing his slow dream

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Empty-Handed

given back
to the forest
my walking stick

missing you
the blue
of a distant lake

almost April
maples redding up
for the breeze

walking home
the shush
that crushed stone makes

a raven’s croak
there’s nowhere to hide
from these blues

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Ritual of Capitulation

This entry is part 11 of 11 in the series Rituals

 

first a festival of gestures
and some time to genuflect
to a higher hierophant

as if anyone still puts stock
in stick figures
unlikely ever to leaf out

unlikeable to lichen
too glossy for moss
untender as tinder

but sticks in the mud are needed
to feed the smoke machine
and please a little siezer

some might be ham-
fingered fecklusters
while others must be utter
butter-fisted tooltips

but all stick to their figures
and abandon their posts
on highway signage
and warning lables
who will coddle the muddle-
headed now

their everyman act puts actual
everypeople to shame
the deep state’s
deepest fakes

their winter of discontent
comes with the best
most luxurious fireplaces

till ashes ashes
and an insurgent May

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Beachhead

putting my phone away
the plushness of the moss

at its greenest now
at the end of a hard winter

a butterfly dances past
like a lost carnival float

the naked trees sway
gray and weather-eaten

i find a habitable hush
in the shade of a pine

though from time to time
a moan interjects

the sound of friction
with a too-close neighbor

a wild lettuce seed drifts
on a pompon of down

up over the mountain
and out across the valley

where every raw patch
of plowed or scoured earth

calls to the migrant killdeer
as an unclaimed shore

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Thaw

a chaos of paths
stops me in my tracks

tumbleweed AKA windwitch
stuck in the icy crust

while moss and lichen
nearby are melting free

touseled but upright
with gray cups upraised

a crushed plastic water bottle
rests like a saint in its icy crypt

the ground shakes
from a coal train

one piece of passing graffiti says
in gothic letters GET OUT

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Meanwhile

crown shyness as they call it
saves the trees
from foreign entanglements

as shrinkwrapped
in ice they glitter
and shed dead limbs

now in my woodstove
a tongue of flame makes
a knot explode

smoke from my chimney
sinks to the ground
and ghosts off into the forest

where i soon follow
over the ice
with chains on my feet

seeking patches of snow
left behind by the wind
for news of spring

chipmunk forays
out of hibernation
the braided tracks of coyotes

bright green
scraps of moss
dug up by a squirrel

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Winter Visions

what snow reveals
in hiding the ground

is no less than the lay of the land
under her fur of bare trees

the curves become clear
their geologic easier to follow

plain as a line of tracks
snow’s other revelation

how the land does in fact
belong to many others

who happen to keep
largely to themselves

as witnessed by hoarfrost
forming at the mouth of a burrow

from some deep breather
in a dreamless den

or the snow angel left
by an owl’s midnight raid

the splay of featherprints
a few drops of blood

disappearing in a squall
the snow showing its truest face

and when it stops
the air smells cleaner

a junco pours out his song
beside the spring

its dark water a refuge
from all this seeing

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Ritual of Crying Wolf

iron storm grate with a pattern like a Medieval shield and the word STORM at the center
This entry is part 9 of 11 in the series Rituals

 

iron storm grate with a pattern like a Medieval shield and the word STORM at the center

wolf down a dog’s
breakfast of hype

cry in unison
use every lost key

feed the feedback
pierce some eardrums

that’s how unutterable
this wolf is

hold haters in contempt
be holocaustic

inspire fear
freeze in the headlights

disbelieve that anyone might choose
the actual wolf