Category: Trees

I like trees. I like them a lot.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Bad Faith

I found some words

from fact to faction
a gathering of teeth

the jaw with its standing stones
like a henge on hinges

offerings of food reduced
to a few hard words

for a songless tongue
is heavier than the devil

and unkissed lips miss
that lipstickiness

glossy as sunlit moss
scarlet as a cardinal flower

on the opposite bank of a creek
choked with rhododendron

and you lose shoes and socks
wade into the cold current

and later when you’re stumped
by a freshly cut ring of wood

where a hollow white oak
has gone missing

you recall all you’ve learned
in watercourses

step inside that chalk outline
and channel a storm

Posted on by Dave Bonta

On Sand Knob Trail

prismatic glints from a spiderweb
catching the sun

as it moves through the forest
on slow stilts

ignoring the trail
an old colliers’ road

now a deep wrinkle
through the rocks

I rest against
an enormous hemlock

and study its dead companion
scarred by woodpeckers

like a mask with a few
too many eyeholes

I take off my shoes
press my bare feet to sand

from a 410 million-year-old shore
turned to stone

distant gunshots
punctuate the silence

there’s no view at the summit
of Greenlee Mountain in the summer

only the rock oaks’
interpretive dance

moving shadows
on a slab of quartzite

a hooded warbler teaching
its young how to sing

***
Rothrock State Forest
July 26, 2024

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Ex Libris

i open a book in the woods
and two ravens take flight

wind shuffles the sunset leaves
the ravens gurgle in the distance

another day breaks down
into its elements

i am trying not to rejoice
at the deaths of my enemies

the spongy moth caterpillars
decorating oaks with their corpses

they too are strangers
and sojourners in the earth

unable to limit their appetites
and stay where they land

the way an old mountain laurel
sheds its spent blossoms

and stands in a patch of what looks
from a distance like snow

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Picnic

in an oak forest whispery
with caterpillar droppings

an ovenbird steps out
on her pink feet

as i drink my pink tea
of sassafras and milk

the sun slides down
a silk thread

whose absent abseiler tracks
a shadow back to its tree

a caterpillar with whiskers
as bristly as a streetcleaner

entering a dark valley
in the bark of a chestnut oak

follows it up the trunk
propelled by its gut pulsing

in sync with the prolegs
from hump to hump

driven almost literally by hunger
a body within the body

that one day will crawl out
with wings and gonads

an overwhelming urge to mate
and no mouth

the female so full of eggs
she will not be able to fly

i finish my lunch
the male ovenbird is singing

a carpenter ant goes past
carrying a splinter

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Mayday

the song comes from a long way off
slow as an old man making water

like a sort of sky
with one persistent cloud

the song brings its own weather
to a climate of fear

filling every redbreast
with territorial ambitions

until a brown thrasher
gets a hold of it and shakes

upside upside down down
get rid of it get rid of it

as the trees launch their fleets
unfurl their sails

cells vibrate in concert
each at its own pitch

a music not meant for any ears
this side of eden

where pollen still turns
our jack boots green

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Greens

the green of moss on an oak
three years dead

the green of greenbriar
on which a deer has grazed

the green of a bench in the woods
where vows were once exchanged

the green of garlic mustard
before it becomes too bitter

the green of ferns that have borne
the weight of snow

the green of winter wheat in the distance
when the sun comes out

the green of lichen on a rock
finding everything it needs

the green of leaves that won’t return
to a toppled witness tree

the old green of trailing arbutus
rushing into bloom for a few cold flies


Plummer’s Hollow, PA
March 17, 2024

Posted on by Dave Bonta

After Life

in a thin soil of its own making
over slabs of ancient sea floor

the vacant shell of a pine
still stands below the ridge crest

gapped open like an iron maiden
with horns of wood

where branch collars
expanded ring by ring

now left behind when
the rest of it rotted out

the limbs they anchored gone
that whole green cathedral

in an afterlife where birds
can perch within

and snowflakes
fine as the hairs on a caterpillar

the squall hits just
as I clear the trees

painting us all white
in a matter of minutes

every twig and pine needle
furred with absence

and hours later when i hike
back up from the other side

following an abandoned
haul road through the rocks

it happens again
the valley lost in whiteout

and i descend through a blur
glasses safe in my pocket

telling myself it’s a spring snow
here and gone

that a glimpse is all we get
of winter any more

trees turned into
a forest of ghosts

as i reach the car
the view finally opens up

a snowy field green
with winter wheat

and a factory holding
5000 hogs they say

though nothing emanates
but a faint hum

the length of its roof pristine
in laboratory white

Canoe Mountain
PA State Game Lands 166
March 10, 2024

Posted on by Dave Bonta

The Well

this ignorance of mine is deep
as the cloudless sky

in which a small
woodpecker is tapping

having somehow heard
the faint stirring of a grub

i follow a deer track
to its source in a deer bed

a snow-free patch of leaves
shaped like a body

in the pines in the pines
where the sun comes undone

i follow a creak
to its source in the wind

rocking an oak snag
upon which so much must hinge

a barred owl query at noon
elicits a raven croak

this too is poetry
i only have to listen

Short Mountain
February 18, 2024