Via Negativa

January 28, 2011January 11, 2013 by Dave Bonta

Appalachian Barren Strawberry

This entry is part 12 of 29 in the series Wildflower Poems

Appalachian Barren Strawberry by Jennifer Schlick (click to see larger)

Waldsteinia fragarioides

“stay together
learn the flowers
go light”
—Gary Snyder, “For the Children“

Don’t let the clearing the loggers left
remain desolate.
Grow an evergreen blanket
over the grave
of a tree’s shadow.

Treat each knot as a chance
to sprout adventitious roots
or open a still
& turn sunshine into sugar,
but go easy on the upward mobility:
keep your leaves & flowers
close-knit.

Say grace before raising
your pollen-heavy heads
to the ministering bee.

Neither barren nor strawberry,
keep your fruit small & hard
& your roots non-medicinal
so nobody but the birds will bother you.

Stay together.
Learn the humans.
Stow light.

January 28, 2011November 20, 2012 by Luisa A. Igloria

Intercession

This entry is part 45 of 95 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Winter 2010-11

“Adoro te devote, latens Deitas,
Quae sub his figuris vere latitas…”
[“I adore you devoutly, O hidden God
truly present under these veils…”]
—St. Thomas Aquinas

The silence of falling snow perhaps is like the hush
that lives somewhere in each moment of great
preparation: as for instance in Pieter van der Borcht’s
medieval copperplate engraving, when you would not know,
unless you read the captions, that the fierce and terrible
mangled faces of the lion and the lioness are from
their desperate expenditure of chi so that their stillborn
cub might live— under the gnarled cypress and rock,
see how its body writhes, stretching and coming to at last
under the double blowtorch of breath. And what of the meal
that the pelican gathers for her young from the cabinet
of her own breast, bright speckled clusters of blood from
the vine? Feathers fragranced with cedar, the phoenix
bursts into flame then crests from its ashes on the third
day; the unicorn comes to lay its head on the virgin’s lap,
and the foliage glistens like a page of illuminated
text. Orpheus knew, afterwards, the dangers of looking
too closely at the silence, of doubting what it might bear.
Think of him ascending from the depths, not hearing
her voice or footfall, not seeing her face. This morning,
also by myself, I bend to attend the furnace’s smolder.
Three deer digging under the wild apple tree
in the garden startle and run down the slope.

—Luisa A. Igloria
01.28.2011

In response to today’s Morning Porch entry.

January 27, 2011May 30, 2016 by Dave Bonta

Ambitions

This entry is part 26 of 37 in the series Bridge to Nowhere: poems at mid-life

Direct link to video on Vimeo.

Text:
When I was young, I did have a few ambitions. I remember wanting to be a tree, or to achieve orbital velocity, or even to fall in love — falling was especially attractive. I remember trying to feel full of potential: an odd proposition, like following the map of veins in the back of your hand, or praying to an unresponsive power company. I hadn’t yet learned how to listen to the silent land. Back then, my mania for writing was only kept in check by my mania for crossing things out, like scratch answering to itch. I kept everything: my papers, you’d say, if I were anyone famous. Leaves from a tree that no longer exists.

I filmed a short walk through the woods during a snowstorm yesterday, but in the absense of image stabilization it turned out to be fairly unwatchable except in short segments. So most of this videopoem consists of game cam footage from our neighbors, Troy and Paula Scott. The cameras are motion-triggered and shoot both normal and infrared, 30-second films. The soundtrack incorporates music by DJ Rkod licensed under a Creative Commons Noncommercial Sampling Plus licence, found at ccmixter.org, which Peter Stephens turned me onto last month (check out his videopoetry on Vimeo).

The power was out for four hours this morning, forcing me to resort to pen and paper, which now strikes me as a very odd way to write.

January 27, 2011November 20, 2012 by Luisa A. Igloria

Spun

This entry is part 44 of 95 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Winter 2010-11

Through air leafed with snow,
a large white bird— albino crow, lost
seagull, emperor crane: emissary
of what secret life or mystery?

Today was promised sun, but nothing
even faintly smolders except the tiniest
crumbs in the toaster tray. Impermanent
visitor, infrequent lodger, you stencil

your mirage on every dissolving thing:
salt, sugar, steam; the spiderweb
of lines upon each palm, the starry
tracks that streak the iron dark.

—Luisa A. Igloria
01.27.2011

In response to today’s Morning Porch entry.

January 26, 2011November 20, 2012 by Luisa A. Igloria

Sentence

This entry is part 43 of 95 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Winter 2010-11

My own, I am I know my hardest
and my most exacting prisoner,
most watchful sentinel braced

against the threshold— And so
in wakefulness sometimes I much prefer
the randomness of sound unpinned

from any explanation— the beeper
of a quarry truck trilling distant
like a digital alarm, the vowels

spelled by dueling chickadees
in the air. Even the ragged fringe
along a line of trees reverses

the abrupt shear where ridge
meets rain-filled sky into
a kind of noise.

—Luisa A. Igloria
01.26.2011

In response to today’s Morning Porch entry.

January 25, 2011January 11, 2013 by Dave Bonta

Dutchman’s Breeches

This entry is part 11 of 29 in the series Wildflower Poems

Dicentra cucullaria

These are no knickers, Dutch or otherwise,
but a yellowed tooth the bumblebee drills for nectar
with her long strong tongue.

Where some see underwear, others —
judging from the common names — see hats,
white hearts or earrings, even butterfly collections.

It’s useful to know what you’re looking at.
Some wasps have learned how to steal nectar
by chewing a hole at the top,
where the Dutchman’s foot would go
into the breech.

I once spotted a white crab spider
hanging from the end of the line
like one more flower,
waiting for an undiscriminating drinker,
the trap of its legs set.

The Menominee used to use it as a love charm,
lie in wait for their crushes & try to hit them
with a well-aimed white heart.

Staggerweed, the old-time farmers called it,
for what the lacy gray-green leaves
could do to a cow.

January 25, 2011November 20, 2012 by Luisa A. Igloria

Landscape, with Small Flakes and Far-off Bandoneón

This entry is part 42 of 95 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Winter 2010-11

“Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.”
—W. B. Yeats, “The Wild Swans at Coole”

In today’s paper, an obituary for a scholar
who’d once taught in our midst— he died
Sunday, nearly two weeks to the day his wife
passed, just a few days after the new year. I knew
who they were but didn’t really know them:
might have seen them at the local coffee shop,
reading the news and eating toasted bagels; or
walking past the laundromat, melting into
the crowd of couples out for brunch. I’d never
thought too much about what it might be like to grow
old alone, or lonely; had more than once declared
that travel solo might be the better way to go—
no expectations, no one to have to pick up for
or after, no epics to endure and survive for dubious
reward (roots like mangroves’ anchored
in marshy soil… ) But even when the narrative’s over,
when the loggers have loaded up the rig and rolled
out of town (inaudible hush, low clouds
suspended above the highway), something in the air
will shimmer, something will always catch.
I stick an arm out, and white motes dot my sleeve.
I lean my forehead on the windowpane and feel my
bindings loosen. I want to hear the air puffed out
the sides of a bandoneon, to master the tangled
slide of paired legs across a polished floor.

—Luisa A. Igloria
01.25.2011

In response to today’s Morning Porch entry.

January 24, 2011 by Dave Bonta

Early Meadow-Rue

This entry is part 10 of 29 in the series Wildflower Poems

Thalictrum dioicum

Dioicum: separate houses.
Here the male
& there the female.

Clouds rise from the male plant
& dangle yellow weather.
From the female plant,
ten-fingered hands stretch
in all directions.

Without scent or nectar,
what flying thing will be
their go-between?
There’s only the wind.

But this meadow-rue
has abandoned the meadow,
so it must flower early or
the canopy will close
& the wind
will retire to the treetops.

Quicksilver-weed.
The leaves aren’t even
open all the way,
& already the male flowers
are vanishing

into the fertile household
of the earth.

January 24, 2011November 20, 2012 by Luisa A. Igloria

One Day, That Room

This entry is part 41 of 95 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Winter 2010-11

Consider the sun today, which sparkles more
like a wheel of tin instead of burnished bronze—

Consider the burdock which, though squat
and uncomely, casts a thin and graceful shadow—

Consider the brittle branches whose pencilled forms
yet bring to mind the musk of summer magnolias—

One day, syllables snagged so long in the throat
will marry bright crystals of salt—

One day a mouth will press against another like the curve
of the moon on a hillside, like a homecoming—

One day the world will be that room,
and that room only.

—Luisa A. Igloria
01.24.2011

In response to today’s Morning Porch entry.

January 23, 2011 by Dave Bonta

False Solomon’s Seal

This entry is part 9 of 29 in the series Wildflower Poems

Maianthemum racemosum (A.K.A. Smilacina racemosa)

False lily-of-the-valley,
false spikenard,
false Solomon’s seal —
well, what the hell
is it, then?
Fleshy rhizome
used despite the lack
of Solomonic imprimatur
to treat insanity, rheumatoid
arthritis, tapeworms,
snakebite, backache,
the common cold
& even conception
if taken the morning after.
Plant whose stalk tacks
back & forth from
leaf to ribbed leaf,
whose immature flowers
take their good green time.
Branched bloom,
white spray where all
the beetles wallow.
Hypogynous flower
with six inconspicuous tepals.
Ovary: superior.
Style: short.
Stigma: obscure.