Category: Trees

I like trees. I like them a lot.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Gone to the Pine

in the stories i tell myself
i am sour milk

good for pancakes
or a cat if i had one

sitting somewhere warm
fur shining white

i am empty-handed
and approximately dressed

but look how much pine
can be knit just from sunlight

evergreen needles
barely moving

though i feel an icy breath
on the back of my neck

coming out of the rocks
where i’ve arranged my seat

just below the crest
of a high wooded spine

the tall pine is hollow
with a stripe of dead wood

from a devastating flash
severing the present

from the past with its absence
of woodpeckers

i follow the shadow
to a seedling pine

on a small carpet of moss
laid out on the rocks

the stories shed
their owl pellets

time to hunker down and scavenge
the best bits

Rothrock State Forest above Barree
Feb. 3, 2024

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Epiphany Eve

in the January silence
my camera’s shutter
makes me jump

the sun is bright on the boulders
grains of old snow
rain down

from acrobatic birches
and oaks stretched out like yogis

filling in the sky
over floors of lichen-
clad quartzite

i sit with my back against
a tall white pine
gazing at its companion

how the plates of bark interlock
their endless variations in shape

and the woodpecker wounds
that have bled
extravagant white rivers

a raven spots
my red cap as usual
and gives my position away

the sun threads a weft of cirrus
it’s Epiphany Eve

i find fresh feather-
coats of ice
on all the woodland pools

where the trees’
shrunken images
have turned jagged and Cubist

while their high drama goes on
even in their present absence

a red-tailed hawk
sails past emitting
its eagle scream

an oak with a massive rack of limbs
can offer
travelers a perch

or frame a view
of the next mountain

so much like this one
except it faces us

and suddenly i see
how a vista
can be a mirror

the kind we’ve always wanted
that keeps its distance

here among the trees
i am glad just
to be in this body

the day before
a forecast snowstorm
to walk forest roads

that lead nowhere in particular
and take their time

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Winter Bells

high above the town
a tree rests on a black stone of sap

like an exclamation mark
for a life sentence

or the old hearth and chimney
that i found yesterday

standing alone
deep in the state forest

we are confronted by the absent
the deciduous undead

drained of sap
immune to the provocations of sunlight

their pantomimes of desire
reduced to mere architecture

while stones dance
through freeze and thaw

all winter long now
rocking in their cradles of leaves

the day after the solstice
the sun reappears

in the dark ice-free end
of a woodland pool

for a long moment just after noon
amid the clamor of bells

Posted on by Dave Bonta

The November Shuffle

to walk through new-fallen leaves
is to raise a thunderous hush

at the trailhead a red maple
grown grandiloquent with age

sends me in the wrong direction
past an abandoned scout camp

and a red oak with four massive trunks
festooned with wild grapevines

i scramble upslope to the trail
slipping on dry oak leaves

a tiger moth caterpillar
isn’t moving in the cold

black and bristly as the fisher
fleeing down the trail ahead of me

more like a badger than a weasel
more trundle than leap

the sun comes out and shows me
the shadow sides of things

a snag wearing a shroud
made of paper birch

beeches flaunting a fool’s gold
of lifeless leaves

tiny mushrooms gathered in a hollow
among yellow birch roots

i pause to snap a photo
and let other walkers pass

two panting humans and a poodle
modeling utter joy

throwing himself at the trail
as it turns up a ravine

completely if temporarily in love
with the smallest of waterfalls

i drop back to regain my solitude
worn out by a lingering cold

pick up yet another glossy leaf
to use as a tissue

on the way to the summit of the second
highest mountain in the state

the vistas are grand but I’m here
for the twisted oaks

finding alternate routes to the sun
through all that ridgetop wind

do they fight it or worship it
like Jacob wrestling in the darkness

but how strategic to drop their sails
before the arctic blasts

and with their leaves down
they are fantastical eldritch rococo

the only oaks that aren’t bare yet
are less than a foot tall

embers to catch the eye
of a young man laboring past

on his mountain bicycle
looking at the ground

from here the mountains of home
disappear into the haze

downslope the trees are younger
but bigger and full of themselves

the trail deviates from the map
re-created for two-wheeled recreation

i head off-trail and soon
become un-lost again

reveling in this leaf litter
a shambles not unlike my own

witch hazel blossoms dangle
in the low-angled sun

but my gaze goes
to the moss and ferns

and every last scrap
of embattled green

***
Blue Knob State Park, November 4, 2024

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Above the River

there’s no mountain
to the cloud

its shadow wandering
lonely as a poet

who no longer believes
in the power of words

as another name escapes
the tip of my tongue

trees are applauding the wind
their life-long mentor

the black birches are yellow
and the black gums
a pale salmon

a hawk flies through the forest
carrying something small
and very dead

a white-tailed deer
raises and lowers
her eponymous flag

as her antlered companion
seems almost to dance
between the boulders

there’s so little soil
the big oaks get their roots out
before they enter the ground

i take my seat
against a chestnut oak
we rock together in the wind

occasionally it makes
a high inhuman sound
that vibrates in my bones

Posted on by Dave Bonta

The Turn

it starts with a zipper in the rain
that soft syllable

an oak leaning into
its impending death

you can shelter under it
as open as a book

it starts red and wrong
as an oak apple

old sapsucker holes bleeding
pale sap down a spruce

rain collecting in a hollow
atop an exposed birch root

so the tree can mainline it
like an autumn addict

mushrooms glory
in their fruiting bodies

as black drupes swell on maple-
leafed viburnum

and beechdrops’ self-fertilized flowers
hide under a twiggy bouquet

it’s a kind of spring
buried in the heart of autumn

just before antlers turn
from trees into weapons

and every leaf in the forest
goes off-script

Posted on by Dave Bonta

A Walk in the Park

dead tree green
with poison ivy

sugar maples self-grafting
like circus freaks

a black birch wearing
a hollow locust tree like a coat

these are among
the unsettling attractions

at the Allegheny Portage Railroad
National Historic Site

a monument to the great unsettling
of the American West

but what’s bitter in the morning
may be sweet by afternoon

i drink hot tea from a thermos mug
like an offering to the heat

staying one pace ahead
of my cloud of insects

though i stop for everything:
the man-made cliffs

dripping with native plants
the detours to peer

at old stone culverts
the interpretive signs

slowly being reinterpreted
by age and weather

preservation and transformation
are dance partners here

foundations are buried
for their protection says a sign

with a photo of the little we’re missing
in black and white

meanwhile the bumblebees
are making love to yellow touch-me-nots

Bombylius major pokes his pointy snout
deep into a lobelia

and a mother leads two teenagers
on a sullen walk for their health

now we are beginning
to get somewhere i think

as an alarmed pickerel frog
disappears into his puddle

and although one might wish
for less proximity to a highway

the trees are old and strange
and i am in my element

no longer on the way to elsewhere
people choose to live here in the hills

our journeys are local
our histories are brief

a sign exhorts us to leave
no trace

August 25, 2023

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Doom Loop

just past the last internet tower
a rattlesnake’s elegant S

slipping through the crushed stone
almost makes you
want its skin

and divining this
its terminal bones
buzz in your direction:

down-ridge over the rocks’
stormwater eyes

which let you pass through them
as easily as the vultures

or the common mullein
at the first overlook

from a seed planted
by a hiker’s boot

on a well-loved trail
a raccoon’s footprint

might spell hard luck
for endangered wood rats

and yes most of the old trees
have fallen to new blights or pests

that travel the same
pilgrimage route

hemlock woolly adelgids
hitching rides on birds’ feet

spongy moth caterpillars
ballooning in each June

but the vistas are glorious
one can still dream wilderness dreams

ignoring recent clearcutting
in the swampy woods below

the old oaks that remain up here
are still so extravagant

seeming to gesture
seeming to conjure up

you can find forests two inches tall
made of gray-green lichen

stop to watch a slug
cross a jagged rock

a study in single-mindedness
gliding on his/her orange foot

or a sharp-shinned hawk
might speak to you

from atop a snag
your eyes meet

you notice how the branch
keeps swaying after he flies

launching into the green-
feathered wind

descent is difficult
who wouldn’t rather stay high

on a mountain stretching
half-way across the state

low as a wrinkle
in the earth’s hide

this would-be spine where pines
grow old and empty

and you peer into the largest one
and find another snake

this time no wilderness creature
but a black rat snake

coiled and sleeping like
the climber’s rope that it is

nearby a tussock caterpillar
yo-yos in mid-air

white and bristly
as a lost eyebrow

and charmed you decide
to walk all afternoon

looping back
in the long shadows
to your car

Jackson Trail, Rothrock State Forest
August 11, 2023

Posted on by Dave Bonta

White Solstice

sun summoning from a white sky
the ridgetop oaks’ fuzzy shadows

gnomons enough to mark
the summer solstice

in one patch of half-sunlight
a box turtle’s red eye blinks

while a scarlet tanager flutters
in the canopy on dark wings

how cool the ghosts
of burning forests have kept us

it’s late morning and i’m still
in long sleeves

a breeze pages through the oaks
a revelation of caterpillars

and the tanager is a quick study
warbling as he hunts

one tree bears a vertical slit
of sky and leaves

crossed by a wide scar
straight through the heartwood

where two intertwined trunks
failed to fuse

and this cross made by a cross
bears an immense green crown

as it should for standing up
to all our weather

eyelids drooping i walk on
into a summer afternoon

the field has its sparrows
and the eastern wood its pewees

but i am melancholy as a catbird’s
parody of a wood thrush

for true refinement can only
be learned from the masters

which is perhaps why the sun
in firefly season

models itself after
that glowworm the moon

Posted on 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.

Lichens brighten in the rain. They open all their pores.

A dry strip of bark appears virtually lifeless in contrast to rain-soaked portions, where moss, algae and lichen have been revived.

But no one beats wood frogs for revivals. From suspended animation to full-on orgy. It boggles the mind.