Poems & poem-like things – Page 1122

May 15, 2008March 6, 2014 by Dave Bonta

Incantation

[audio:http://www.vianegativa.us/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/incantation.mp3]

The caterpillar tents start appearing
just as the leaves burst their buds,
as if someone with a white marker
were doodling in every crotch of limbs.
My dad goes into the hospital to have
a large, non-malignant tumor
removed from his lower spine,
& I picture a white knot swelling
with caterpillars of pain.
A day after the surgery he’s taking
his first steps without it, this thing
that has made almost every position
of repose impossible for weeks,
forcing him to stand or to walk
slowly for hours each day.
Now it has been thoroughly cast out
through the surgeon’s art,
excised, exposed: bulb that burned
but gave off no light.
Sexless flower. Empty tent.
Be gone. Be gone. Be gone.

Here in the woods where my father returns
in a couple days to resume his walking —
this time to heal rather than assuage —
flashes of scarlet as a tanager
snatches gnats & caterpillars from
the not quite fully opened leaves,
singing a line of his hoarse song
between each mouthful of wings,
each mouthful of spines.

May 12, 2008 by Dave Bonta

Ode to a Plane

This entry is part 16 of 31 in the series Odes to Tools

1.
The carpenter’s plane glides
through a sky of wood,
no propeller but the knob,
no tail but the tote,
no landing gear but the mouth & the blade
& no chance of flying but the flat steel frog.

2.
The carpenter’s plane touches down
& down. Chips curl in a wave
that never stops breaking.
No one ever really escapes;
all planes are bound to the planet.
The only route out leads farther in.

3.
When the carpenter’s plane got to Japan
it began to work in reverse:
there’s always more power in the homeward pull.
You go out hungry & come back
digesting fragments light as air,
dangerous with the scent of new surfaces.

May 9, 2008 by Dave Bonta

Ode to Scythes

This entry is part 15 of 31 in the series Odes to Tools

The scythes are emissaries
from a country
that no longer exists.
They have only each other
to converse with now
that their translator
the whetstone went off
& joined the knives.
They huddle together
in corners, nested esses
long in the tooth
but still as fluid
as the staff of Moses
at the exact moment
it shifted into an asp.
Do you remember,
they murmur, how
the crowds
would lose their heads
& stand like soldiers,
stiff, when the wind
moved through?

May 7, 2008 by Dave Bonta

Ode to a House Jack

This entry is part 13 of 31 in the series Odes to Tools

This time, there are no magic beans.
Every man-jack turns into
an acme-threaded beanstalk.

The hound under the porch
noses at the growing
hoard of sunlight

as the old house
climbs groaning
into the sky.

May 6, 2008 by Dave Bonta

Ode to a Measuring Tape

This entry is part 14 of 31 in the series Odes to Tools

Tape that doesn’t stick, reliable as the pronouncements of some close-lipped neighbor who never goes beyond the corner of the block. Tape that bends to follow the flank of a fish. Vacuuming dried begonia petals from a window ledge, I accidentally suck up a snail shell, one of three I’d had on display. It rattles briefly down the long hose & is gone. Shall I open the Shop-Vac’s fat belly & dig for it in the slag heap of dust & dead beetles? No, I’ll look for another. Snails in the woods are subject to continual Rapture — their empty shells are legion. Ditto for the ladybugs that litter every corner now that winter is past.

In an old house like this, nothing is square. The yellow blade of the contractor’s measuring tape was out of its case more often than it was in, checking the height of the ceiling every few feet. Either come in or stay outside, our exasperated parents used to tell us. On rainy days we’d spiral from the basement to the attic, leaving half-finished sketches to go try on costumes from a huge carton of old clothes.

Tape that doesn’t stick, like the tongue of snake. I had a friend in grade school who particularly enjoyed this game of dress-up. We’d switch between oversized suits & oversized gowns without a second thought. One time we even dressed as a newlywed couple & paraded downstairs to show my mom. I don’t recall her sharing our enthusiasm. As far as I was concerned, it was adulthood we were parodying, not gender roles per se. We laughed to think what kind of fop such clothes would actually fit. But now I can’t fit into my own jeans from five years ago, & as for my erstwhile friend, some neighbor said he came out of the closet as a homosexual & moved to Florida with his lover, not necessarily in that order. I know if I were gay, I’d leave this area and never look back.

Tape that doesn’t stick. Yesterday morning I wrote 25 lines, dense with slant rhymes & alliteration, & in the evening I retracted them & left just two words on the page, a fragment of an ode:

Steel
snail.

May 1, 2008 by Dave Bonta

Ode to a Plumb Bob

This entry is part 12 of 31 in the series Odes to Tools

Brass doorknocker
for a house without a door

downward dog
always on point over the same
obvious quarry

flightless rocket
leaded with failure

pendulum made
to mark eternity
one still moment at a time.

April 29, 2008 by Dave Bonta

Ode to a Magnetic Screwdriver

This entry is part 11 of 31 in the series Odes to Tools

If the part that screws
is the head — this X-
shaped tip — then
the other end must be
tail: the shaft rooted
in transparent sun-
colored plastic like
an insect in amber.
And considering how
the power drill
with screwdriver bit
has replaced it,
this might as well be
a relic from
the Mesozoic.
The tip attracts
anything steel, but
can only solve for x,
descending into
the head of the screw
like a spirit
into someone possessed,
spinning like a purpose-
driven whirlwind
in a desert of wood,
inclining ever so slightly
toward magnetic north.

April 23, 2008 by Dave Bonta

Ode to Forks

This entry is part 10 of 31 in the series Odes to Tools

Metal claws of the beast
we would much rather
be descended from —
no wimpy swinging in trees,
no equivocating opposable tine —

whether pitching hay or turning soil
their purpose is the same:
to bite what they cannot chew
& carry what they cannot keep.

There are forks also in roads,
in creeks & in tongues,
but for them
everything remains open.
How ironic then that the man-made fork
should epitomize inflexibility:
insurrectionary bedfellow of the torch,
stoker of digestive fires,
guard’s goad in an underworld
we hope never to descend to,
minimal lightning that we are,
tree gone wrong.

April 21, 2008 by Dave Bonta

Autumn in April

Autumn in April:
leaves drift down from a beech tree,
maples are red again.

A millipede is climbing
the bathroom wall
next to the toothbrushes.

Three red-tailed hawks
dive-bomb each other
in the unseasonable heat.

The hugely pregnant
feral cat stares balefully
from behind the hyacinths.

The sprouted millet
still shows a little yellow;
goldfinches, a little green.

When the rain subsides,
a blue-headed vireo’s
deliberate song.

Watched the bears till dark.
In the morning, muddy pawprints
on the windows.

In the porcupine-girdled
branches of the plum tree,
a male cardinal.

April 19, 2008 by Dave Bonta

Ode to a Bucket

This entry is part 9 of 31 in the series Odes to Tools

As a bucket ages,
its galvanized surface
takes on the look
of new ice — that blue-
white jigsaw puzzle —
or a flock of cranes.
Something in its make-up
clearly rebels
against its type-casting
as a mere container
or temporary conveyance.
Even half-full,
for example, the handle
cuts into the hand.
People rarely think
to store a bucket
upside-down, so when
the bottom rusts through,
it can at last retire
& start life over:
a planter
for marigolds
on top of a stump
in a crew-cut lawn;
a transportable target
for rifle practice;
or hung on a nail
in the garden shed,
a home for wrens.
They line it
with grass & weeds
& perch burbling
on the rim,
bobbing up & down
on spring-loaded legs,
drawing from
an inexhaustible well.