Photos – Page 8 – Via Negativa

May 28, 2023May 28, 2023 by Dave Bonta

Bullshit Walks

found in a flower
one beetle’s quota of sleep

longhorned to graze
in pastures of white

Clintonia or Solomon’s plume
and soon the black cohosh

looking up i spot a raccoon’s
wide-eyed mask

returning my gaze from the crotch
of a dying hemlock

every day has its dog
on Thursday for a long moment

i walked with a yearling bear
ahead of me on the trail

whose walk is it then
one can only wander

on the steep slope
above the railroad

i find a patch of jacks-in-the-pulpit
that the deer missed

a train hurtles past with blue
containers of stink

our daily delivery of refuse
from the megalopolis

i climb through century-old quarries
rocks shift underfoot

still settling
where mountain holly blooms

the breeze wafts ambrosia
from some reclusive azalea

i pause for breath
a vireo chirps in alarm

i stop for lunch
a hooded warbler scolds

down-trail a second-generation
mourning cloak butterfly

circles its dappled
patch of sun

territory folks defending
their stake in the sticks

while a distant cuckoo
chants her own name

gorging on tent caterpillars
and spotted lanternfly larvae

letting strangers
foster her offspring

this is the background
i can’t include in my shots

whenever i stop to snap photos
of new or bigger plants

how green is my mountain now
with so much CO2 in the air

my ankles brush against
the Aladdin lamps of pale corydalis

rising through the still-tender
hayscented ferns

and a mosquito sinks her rig
right through my hat

the sun may descend into haze
but the light’s still perfect

the mountain’s shadow stretching
across the farm valley to my east

i watch a manure spreader
ply the rows of a sterile field

growing the dead zone
out of mind in the Chesapeake

until the wind shifts
and i beat a retreat

back from my walk i turn
the garden with a fork

straining out noodley roots
of invasive brome

dry fists of dirt
crumble at the touch

May 19, 2023May 19, 2023 by Dave Bonta

Next Exit: Xanadu

one must leave the garden
of earthly delights

where it belongs in a chest
or dresser drawer

the true Beulah is more ordinary
swaying on its stalk

lure and haven for a host
of nectar-seekers

blooming quick as thought
before the trees sprout new shadows

shaped like gaywings bellwort
mayflower windflower

thin as a spindle
in the fat of the land

or massive as an old red oak
encircled by bear corn

supplicants turned parasitic
must leave their own leaves behind

diminutive towers flowering
out of the ground

till the corollas lose
their erections

and the teeth of the calyx
turn brown and drop

what would you give up
for a life of ease

the garden of earthly delights
slithers on its belly

quieting the cries of nestlings
one by one

it lives as angels do
only in the moment of contact

upside-down and electric
from a thundercloud’s dark soil

a devastating epiphany
heartwood preserved in charcoal form

as the oak grows its hollow
for wilder life

May 14, 2023May 14, 2023 by Dave Bonta

Out with the Old

Barely noticed below the riot of spring wildflowers, last year’s leaves are breaking down into a common duff. Towhees aren’t as noisy now as they rummage for roughage.

deer skull and spine
on the old skid road
stretching my legs

Even the once-waxy oak leaves have worn thin, though the tailoring is still sharp—a close fit to the planet, which I see caricatured in a freshly fallen oak apple gall, green and glistening, the remains of its hacked leaf sticking out like a hitchhiker’s thumb.

standing water—
a birch tree perches
atop each stump

It’s humid. As the air warms, a cloud of gnats gathers around my hat.

snap
of a flycatcher’s beak—
winter’s gone

May 1, 2023May 1, 2023 by Dave Bonta

Beltane

and what if my photos lose
any center of interest
becoming pure tapestry

i want no subjects
i want the impossible world itself
without me in it

after a late hard frost
i want to stroke each velvety leafling
on the mountainside

nothing is realer right now
than this green
i get off my train of thought for it

for an enormous oak with tiny leaves
twirling on their twigs against the clouds
like larval dragons

as the wind turns rainy
as a dog’s tongue
and the green fades with the daylight

i count mountains to fall asleep
leaving room in my dreams
for their lost languages

before the Great Hill People
wiped out the People
of the Blackened Ridge Pole

and Scotsmen came from Ulster
enlarged the void with rifles
and whiskey made from maize

clearcutting and prospecting
shooting the cougars
trapping out the wolves

without whom an alien
far less palatable greenness
spreads over the land like mold

i have been battling it with both hands
pulling out rampant barberry
privet and autumn olive

stopping to listen to new warblers
still flying thousands of miles
just to breed here

that nasal buzz
of a black-throated green
or a black-throated blue

and my camera is only a phone
with so many missing contacts
i hold it up to the sky

April 16, 2023April 16, 2023 by Dave Bonta

Four Nights on Earth

the evening sky pulses
like an organ of light and void

the planets aren’t up
to anything i tell myself

a weasel’s shrill cry
behind me in the meadow

i recall the seething darkness
of tadpoles in a shrinking puddle

and the predatory newt who watched
over them as they hatched

east- and west-bound freights
pass each other moaning

a satellite crosses the heavens
without so much as a twinkle

dawn sky
through skinny branches

a thin blade of moon
in its halo like a fish on a platter

a quiet trickle from the spring
gives way to guttural trucks

the open range of the night
is closing fast

any minute now the birds begin
their summoning spells

if the earth’s ache for rain
should become my own

let me suckle at the root
of the lightning tree

for seventeen years
like a cicada

thunder might become
an antidote to numbness

there may be a howl
that holds us all in its bowl

spring peepers will keep up
their transmissions

ground fog and glowworms
build and fade
below the milky way

meteors leave
the briefest of trails

on the horizon the blink
blink of a red-eye flight

i try to picture other skies
elsewhere in the galaxy

what exotic stars
what mysteries of lifelessness

and how many more lives
might i have i wonder

as these stars start to fade
and tires resume
their dull rounds

giving the road called i-99
its red breakfast

April 12, 2023April 12, 2023 by Dave Bonta

Geo Logic

pausing for breath i gaze up
into blossoming red maples

from one of which a red-
tailed hawk lifts off

the wake-robins’ wine-dark
buds are loosening

gnats circle my head
baffled by my glasses

i can hear a waterthrush
up around the next bend

of the stream that carved
this whole masterpiece of a hollow

though you’d never guess
from the way it breaks

over every rock and log
like something fragile

i push my glasses back up
and resume pulling weeds

for my mother, Marcia Bonta

April 7, 2023April 7, 2023 by Dave Bonta

The Way to the Ocean

the way to the ocean
goes through New Jersey

named for an island
where a king once kept his head

on the other side of the Atlantic
an inch and a half farther away each year

which sounds like a tall tale
a sailor might tell

if boardwalk barkers didn’t already
cover the waterfront

on the way to the ocean
circling vultures turn into gulls

fish crows
quack like ducks

a mockingbird riffs from the roof
of a manufactured home

in a manufactured village
right off U.S. Route 322

which has somehow caught up with me
after we parted in the mountains

i walk its broad shoulder
past brown fields and brownfield sites

it’s early spring so most green things
are aliens: privet ivy multiflora rose

aside from a few
prickly natives:

American holly Atlantic whitecedar
and the pines the pines

their high pitch where forest fires licked
what the locals call sugar sand

ducking into the woods
i find an old homeless camp

collapsed tent frame
discarded high-visibility coveralls

on the way to the ocean
is no way to live

to settle like fallen leaves
wherever the wind takes us

living on the road means
a groundhog oblivious to traffic

burrow hidden in a tangle
of Oriental bittersweet

or a burger place across the road
from a billboard for addiction recovery

a farmer on a backhoe
leading a small herd of goats

pray, hope & don’t worry
says a sign by someone’s mailbox

beyond which I find a faded
bouquet of artificial roses

hanging upright where i imagine
it had been flung from a car window

the right of the people to keep and bear arms
shall not be infringed says a billboard

across the highway from a weeping cherry
in full glorious bloom

i turn onto a smaller road
past a resort campground

lakes are easy to make here
where the Atlantic once beached

circling one of them on foot
i am accosted twice

by people wondering whether i’m lost
or am looking for someone

and neither is a question i quite
know how to answer

a woman embracing a bear of a man
rumbles past on a Harley

and off under the pines
all around a derelict trailer

i spot the bright green flags
of skunk cabbages

the way to the ocean
doesn’t wait for continental drift

though perhaps it could i think
standing on the beach at Ocean City

gazing out at the immensity
for a heartbeat or two

then down to my feet
at scallop shells

reminding me that any road
can become a route for pilgrimage

you can walk the boardwalk
out past the end of capitalism

lie down in the sand
and rust

because the true way to the ocean
must begin at the ocean

students running with a kite
a man watching a fishing line

a child who digs shallow holes
and lets them fill with sky

with gratitude to my cousin Heidi Myers Suydam for all her hospitality

March 24, 2023November 8, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Homebody

the way a tendril winds
spiraling into steadfastness

clockwise or counter-clockwise
there’s wisdom in it

every time i circle my home ground
i grasp it a bit better

till i can wind through the house at night
without even having to see

hands and feet discover
how much they already know

not the exact number of steps
but the way they feel

iambic trochaic
anapestic spondaic

my feet and the ground
are old lovers after dark

i make a circuit of the trails
the milky way changes direction

thank-you-ma’ams dug last year
no longer make me stumble

but sometimes i forget where i am
and a moment of pure terror descends

and when sleep sits on my eyelids
other places i’ve known come back to me

or me to them legs twitching
taking their measure once more

though dream steps follow
a slower stranger rhythm

and sometimes in the morning i’ll ache
in unexpected places

March 23, 2023 by Dave Bonta

Fabulous

Today was a day for visions… though not necessarily a day for understanding. The light had a special quality to it, that early spring haziness.

It was a day bookended by thunderstorms. The temperature climbed into the low 60s.

A fire hydrant at the edge of town stood guard over a feral underground.

Near the crest of the ridge, I saw a tree eating a large rock.

I don’t like that someone did this but I can’t help but admire the tree’s response.

I’ve noticed this tree before, but not after a hard rain. Its eye of lichen really blazed forth, and its green suit of moss was fabulous.

The rain also accentuated the distinction between the two halves of this oak, one dead, the other very much alive. This too seems fabulous, in the specific sense that it reminds me of something out of a fable.