Category: Pennsylvania

The only U.S. state named for its forests.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Our Lady of the Alleghenies

so often the sky looks more
maternal than the earth

i am listening to the traffic
of wind through bare trees

snow on the cliffs growing
roots of ice

from the drained lake
a mechanical thumping

I recall a feeder stream
in lurid unrhyming orange

what’s behind the allegheny front
but played-out coal

the late afternoon light
gains a hint of sunset

warm air dancing with cold air
the clouds turn voluptuous

and the distance even bluer
my own mountain included

on the way home
the apparition of an old man

bent nearly double beside the road
dragging a full bin of trash

the next day snow falls
soft and heavy even in the valleys

with winds off the front
molehills become mountains again

trees are striped white
on the weather side

down in the hollow i spot
the first winter wren in weeks

bobbing with excitement
at the end of a snowy limb

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Les fleurs de l’hiver

in a brown study of a winter
anything bright draws the eye

one snowflake
wandering through the forest

the scarlet crest
of a pileated woodpecker

her knocks inaudible
above the ridgetop wind

working her snag all the while
i sip my afternoon tea

under a table mountain pine
whose sighs are endless

the sun almost comes out
but then it doesn’t

graupel ticking in the leaves
leads me to witch’s butter

a yellow rose turned
to enchanted flesh

feeding on the fungi they say
that feed on the dead

orange ellipses
on black birch

when bees are imaginary
any brightness can bloom

even green rocks held aloft
by upturned roots

or corrugated steel
chthonic with rust

below the ruin of a pine
sky filling the round holes

where limbs once stretched
toward the sun

Posted on by Dave Bonta

January Thaw Walk

Bell Gap again

raindrops land with a random
industrial rhythm

on the metal roof of a trail shelter
wrapped in fog

a flash of white from a woodpecker’s wings
as i set out again

feeling parenthetical
under a black umbrella

at the two mile marker
a greenbriar vine’s final leaf

fog retreating up the mountain
doesn’t use the trail

the wet cliffs seem to glow
i page through shelves of blue shale

looking for fossils i find
hibernating lady beetles

and snow hiding below the rocks
protected by rhododendron leaves

that must’ve been stripped off
by high winds

in the place of white birches
i remember my former life

in a distant city
my own tongue gone strange

i walk through a river of cold air
flowing down the gorge

at the by-gone railroad’s
horseshoe bend up the mountain

entering the cloud
i pull on my poncho

to the accelerating pulse
of a ruffed grouse drumming

i’m agog at the beadwork
of rain on every twig

ridge lines begin to emerge
above the clouds

an erasure as selective as
a song dynasty landscape

hiding a highway
and half the sounds of traffic

four chickadees forage
in the trailside sumacs

a white birch appears
through a hole in the clouds

on the side of the next mountain
but i’m turning back

on the slope below me
stark naked branches

where a porcupine has been
exercising his teeth

feeling peckish myself
i pick up a bunch of wild grapes

that old taste of wine
left out too long

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Frankstown Path

to someone from the hills
how much seems to hide

in a river valley
where everything’s in the open

members only
says the dick pic

on the remains of a bridge
for a vanished road

you don’t belong
say the name plates

turned blank again by years
of riverside mildew

here’s the poured concrete
shell of a house

almost everything organic
has rotted out

if you put your ear up to it
you can hear the sky

over there a dry canal bed
with thirsty sycamores

and a pyramid built
to kiln quarried lime

strata standing on end
like books on a shelf

paged through
by omnivorous roots

every floodplain is built
on wreckage and erasure

this is an indian path
on the oldest maps

people wandering upstream
deep into the hills

but not like shad
returning to spawn

more like shadbush
marooned on mountainsides

condemned to bloom only
when no one’s looking

while the flood sows
its own seeds

pods and baubles
evolved to float

horsetails bamboozling the ground
into turning vertical

but it’s privet that crowds
so many others out

running rampant after its escape
from the hedge clippers

clinging to its leaves as if this
were still the old country

passers-by direct me
to a midwestern native

american wahoo with
its pink capsules blown

revealing the fleshy red arils
so like its cousin bittersweet

glowing in the low
december sun

a hillside boulder chooses
this moment to depart

ending its journey
a foot from the trail

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Allegheny Portage Railroad

climbing this cold mountain
half your face in shadow

moon which daytime cloud
have you made your nest in

immense turbine blades
are rising and falling

above the trees
above the roar of traffic

where a cold hiker
can feel drawn

to a dark twist of roots
suspended above a ravine

or a cliff shaggy
with hipster icicles

along a trail designed
by the national park service

to showcase ‘a gateway
to western settlement’

i keep mistaking the sound of the turbines
for my own pulse

a runner in ultralight shoes
shadowed by clouds of breath

keeps his eyes on the ground
a steady incline

built to haul canal boats
over the allegheny front

while below the trail
in a 200-year-old culvert

for a creek that’s wandered
off into another bed

i gape at stalactites of ice
dripping into a pool

bright with late afternoon sun
the whole glowing summit

captured there
under an arch of mortared stone

the red west of sunset
here and now

no need to ride
off into it

***

For more, see the NPS website.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Frankstown Branch

a river flows through the heart
of a nearby mountain

banks lined with sycamores
limbs luminous as moonlight

and the ghost of a canal
there just long enough

for Charles Dickens
to patronise it

now it’s a rail-trail
looked after by local farmers

and in the late autumn light
it can still transport

i watch a large black ball
float sedately downstream

mergansers flushed by a jogger
fly low over the water

under the outstretched
sycamore limbs

with their summer hunger for sun
to make more baubles

i pass an Amish man
dressed in blaze orange

taking his rifle
out for a stroll

among crumbling walls
the exuviae of bygone quarries

doorways open into
what’s left of the earth

soot-darkened soil
where Dickens saw

light gleaming off
from every thing

when he took a brisk walk
upon the towing-path

and after nightfall frowning hills
sullen with dark trees

which were sometimes angry
in one red burning spot high up

colliers turning those dark trees
into mounds of charcoal

to feed the iron furnace
its stone stack roaring

enough like a volcano
they named it Mt. Etna

so much radiance squandered
on an industrial revolution

one remnant section of canal
forms a backwater

floating leaves
still in their autumn red

suspended like memories
among reflections

i pass the former iron master’s mansion
just off the trail

its gorgeous stone work
its collapsed porch

behind me in the distance
a rifle speaks

the river runs slow
and green

***

Quotes are from Dickens’ American Notes

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Tussey Mountain: a walking poem

day breaks
into increments of gold

a falling leaf flits back and forth
like a doomed moth

acorns gestate
in the throat pouch of a jay

the breeze is spicy with rot
i take deep lungfuls

nuclear armageddon
is trending on twitter

the bluestone road
seduces me again

*

each of my feet aches
in its own way

the left to take wing
the right to take root

they take me where hemlocks
pry open the rocks

and vultures drift past
without flapping

a section of trail famous
for being hard on boots

it is difficult says the guidebook
to get any rhythm going

as you step from rock
to rock

but this is the music
i grew up with

a grouse cups his wings and drums
on the skin of the air

*

distant booms
a shooting range perhaps

the sun goes in but
the yellow keeps glowing

chickadees announce my presence
in unflattering terms

to a mixed flock feeding
on mountain ash berries

a rock shifts under me
i shift with it

at a trail intersection someone
has dug a hole in the rocks

revealing the water table
its serving of birch leaves

farther along the hemlock
burnt from below

by an untended camp fire
that turned roots to charcoal

two years later it’s dead
but for one last limb

stripped down to the skeleton
for a sky burial

*

descending the flank of the ridge
i find a proper spring

yellow coral mushrooms
extend crossed fingers

the mountain can punish
moments of inattention

but i am a bad student
i walk in two places at once

a place of wings
and a place of roots

that night the moon flies
through prismatic clouds

at its brightest
and most manic

stained by the dark
beds of seas

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Snyder-Middleswarth Natural Area, 2012: life after death

hemlock skeletons

The last time I visited the old-growth stand of eastern hemlocks at Snyder-Middleswarth Natural Area, in central Pennsylvania’s Bald Eagle State Forest, the hemlocks were succumbing to a wooly adelgid infestation, and I figured they’d all be dead in a few years. That was early June 2007. My hiking buddy Lucy and I felt we should go back five years later and see what was taking the hemlocks’ place.

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