Nature/Ecology – Page 8

April 27, 2023 by Dave Bonta

Fugue State

let’s pretend to be savage again
with wild temperature swings
and hundred-year floods
tooth and claw rentable by the hour

let’s pretend to be real
authentic and shelf-stable
as if today’s sunrise
were the same as yesterday’s

let’s pretend to believe again
bust out our green flags
follow along in spring’s hymnal
loving the absurd turns inward and out

let’s pretend love and hate are opposites
tell it to the stranger in the mirror
and wipe that knowing smirk
off our misinformed face

let’s pretend we’re wild again
nobody’s monitoring our movements
rounding us up for captive breeding
replacing our habitat with a new convenience store

let’s pretend there’s time still
for every purpose
find timelessness between the trees
who stand for everything

April 22, 2023April 22, 2023 by Dave Bonta

Dispatch from a Warming Planet

an April morning turns torrid
it begins with a buzz

a rustle in the oak leaves
shed last fall

as a bumblebee emerges
spotless from the earth

below the damp bells
of huckleberry blossoms

and every dangling catkin
in the wind’s index

morels raise
their hitchhikers’ thumbs

each webbed with a maze
of forking paths

i find the remains of a list
in my back pocket

the washing machine has
erased every last item

and puzzled the paper up
like gray honeycomb

this is what happens when i try
to collect myself

better just to focus
on finding places

where i can step without crushing
fresh-leafed ephemera

a whiff of smoke from a forest fire
five miles away

i struggle up the hill in the heat
a black-and-white warbler wheezes

i find a spot of shade where
witch hazels have leafed out

sitting in gray among gray rocks
i’m invisible to a groundhog

who wanders past without
so much as a glance

soon i too resume sleep-
walking in the heat

my shoes turn
yellow with pollen

a bumblebee vanishes
into a vole tunnel

a mile down the ridge i find
a pile of owl feathers

just beginning to scatter
in the midday glare

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

April 1, 2023 by Dave Bonta

Time Travelers

how the hours have fallen
from their early days among monks

now they are uniform
modular
single-use

save for the odd poet or naturalist
taking minutes like medicine

for whom listening might be
the purest form of devotion

at the bottom of the hollow
two migrant waterthrushes

serenade the stream
its blended whiskery gurgles

just before it vanishes
into a culvert under the railroad

and a freight train’s
ground-shaking metal

i climb into the sun
of mourning cloaks

the pale edges of their wings
dazzle like blades

as they chase and battle
over an open patch of ground

crossed by the shadows
of slow vultures

i come to a clearing where all
the oaks have died

paradise
for a pair of bluebirds

whose blink-and-you-miss-it copulation
releases a torrent of song

it is their golden hour
round and endless

here they will ravel detritus
into a nest

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.