Category: Nature/Ecology

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Ground Control

all day my left hand has been
so much colder than my right

the sun barely rises
a plane circles as if lost

it feels like a mirage
this snowlessness in january

leafless treetops intricate
against the clouds

frozen bubbles in an old pond
where frogs sleep

i have been playing scholar
reading commentaries on commentaries

now i walk a trail that doesn’t bend
for more than a mile

as if i needed to know
what solitude looked like

beside the unflagging river
somehow older than the hills

yellow trucks lined up beside
a blue-gray mountain of gravel

where highways meet
under a clearing sky

hemlock trees have found footholds
in crumbling shale cliffs

at the trailhead an inverted canoe
shelters three shelves of books

i read the titles: a time to kill
to love again

i only know who i am when
i am somebody else

which could be a commentary
on writers of commentaries

but the sky seems like
a good place for canoes

all this walking i do
has led me to a delusion

that there’s such a thing
as solid ground

when it’s just my feet
learning how to take root

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Burlesque

In a forest of headless trees, the one tree with a burl is Pope of Fools.

It’s no accident that burl rhymes with pearl. I mean, it is an accident, but one that makes you think.

If you’re ever in the woods and feel as if you’re being watched, that may be due to the presence of burls. Though to me they have more of a listening air about them.

Brain surgeons could train on them but don’t, as far as I know. Woodworkers could turn them into bowls, and some do.

Such a bowl wouldn’t do for an ordinary salad. It would have few if any practical applications. You’d just want to have it out on display where you and your friends can gather around, standing very still and whispering whenever there’s a wind.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

On the Ownership of Mountains

river in November light between bare woods and mountain

We have our own private mountains, but are they already too tired from waiting for us?
Etel Adnan

a break in the rain
itself a break in the snow

i take a chance on a walk
on my own mountain

the one i live on but also
the one that lives in my head

without their leaves
and most of their birds

the moss-footed trees
couldn’t be quieter

where snow lay until yesterday
the forest floor glistens

the sun is a bright wound
that soon heals over

two ravens converse
from the tops of adjacent trees

croaking high and low
they fly off into the clouds

then the fluting of a goose
with 27 followers

so low over the trees i swear
i feel the breeze from their wings

the tiredness drains
from my legs as i walk

i’m stopped by gnarled
skeletons of mountain laurel

one still clinging
to a fallen oak leaf

what is this blight
where are the snows of yesteryear

i pass a hollow tree just in time
to see its resident porcupine

tail like a spiny piñata
disappearing up inside

below on the road a fresh litter
of chewed-off hemlock twigs

the creek is high but clear
boisterous but well-behaved

yesterday’s ice already seems
as far-fetched as a dream

but how is it that even in winter
a mountain can give clean water

to the mink and muskrats downstream
the heron and trout

a forest grows fitter as it ages
better at filtering water

better at storing carbon
even in steep mountain soil

so the oaks as they sleep
are making fresh compost

growing the mountain
they grow on

attentive in a way that i
alleged part owner could never be

whose woods these really are
i think i know

a land trust oversees their right
not to be destroyed

but the mountain belongs
as all mountains do to the moon

earth’s own private mountain
alive only in our oceanic bodies

which are made for walking
for circling like pilgrims or scavengers

for going from full to dark
to full again

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

Thaw

with every step a bird
takes in the snow

there’s another arrow
pointing backwards

the snow sprouts four
small gray feathers

as it shrinks in the sun
other things appear

fallen fox grapes
a bluebird hawking gnats

five small forest pools
at the head of the hollow

where reflections are still
a bit blurry

Posted on by Dave Bonta

In-Between Time

river in November light between bare woods and mountain

flat white ground
matching the sky

and the trees and whatnot in between
seeming to float

i get vertigo on a mountainside
blank as an unfilled-out form

anchor myself by looking at bare leaves
in the shape of a sleeping deer

any fallen seed or leaf now
becomes a botanical specimen

i look up from the page in time
to see a vole slipping back under

its dark pelt doesn’t stop moving
even for an instant

hypertension or flow state
or maybe a bit of both

the distant limestone quarry’s
giant steps

bring us no closer either
to the ground or the sky

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Winter storm thoughts

It’s below zero Fahrenheit with a howling wind just two nights past the longest of the year. The juniper tree I planted next to the house thumps against the eaves. In my youth I’d be living it up, blasting the stereo while getting roaring drunk and feeding wood to a stove some visitors once dubbed Ol’ Sparky. Now I am apparently grown old, it’s sit hunched over a keypad and worry about what to do if the power goes out.

Every winter I vow to winterize this old plank-wall farmhouse. Every summer, foolish woodrat, I forget. I blame Janus, that two-faced bastard. Resolutions aren’t solutions.

*

Just about every decade, I re-read the Norse sagas, I’m not sure why. It’s hard to look away from their grimy brutality and insights into human and inhuman character. Today: Eyrbyggja Saga. I’d remembered it had some horror elements but had forgotten just how many walking dead there were—holy hell. It’s the world’s first folk horror novel! Complete with a haunted cow.

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

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

On the Far Side

getting unlost again
i leave the car at the overlook

follow the trail down
the far side of the mountain

where a flash flood preceded me
in the wee hours

scouring the steep parts
mounding up leaves on every flat

it’s the day after thanksgiving
and the day before deer season

a half-mile from the highway
i find a pair of black trousers

sprawled beside the trail
i fold them and put them back

the trail meets another trail
on boardwalks over a spring

passes three camp sites
on the shore of a long-gone pond

goes up over the front
porch of a cabin

and back into the forest
where oak and hemlock shadows

darken and fade as the sun
goes in and out of hiding

i leave the trail
bushwhack through mountain laurel

gape at a massive rock oak’s
full-throated silence

black birches perch
on exposed skeletons of roots

i follow forest roads
the second one gated

past what must be
a research plot

a large fenced enclosure
full of small flags

and much to my surprise find
the unblazed trail i’m looking for

back up the ridge
the forest on my right

facing off against pole
timber on my left

to the windy crest
its rocks and vertigo

gaps in the trees revealing
gaps in the clouds

patches of sun that cross
the next valley and vanish

while off to the south all
the mountains shine

here in the gloom pileated woodpeckers
are stripping bark off a tree

i pass three hikers discussing
the perils ahead

the clouds thin out
and the rocks begin to glow

sunset colors in mid afternoon
at a place called david’s vista

a young man appears
and climbs a ridgetop pine

in the bitter wind
makes himself comfortable

another david perhaps
hoping to be found