Contemplative poems

Contemplative poems — a collection of the best works on PoemShip.

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Dave Bonta

Thanksgiving Fisher

all around the great dead oak as darkness falls a fisher dances hunting white-footed mice a dark sine curve against the snow that is also somehow able to freeze for long minutes crouching pouncing coming up empty it is only i sitting across the frozen pond who leaves feeling fuller than before filled i suppose with seasonally appropriate gratitude

Dave Bonta

Time Lines

and the deer came on long legs between the trees and clashed antlers with a sound old and dry as the wind gnats danced as if summer had returned for one day only everything must go through a gray mist that may have been in my head i measured the mountain with my body pacing it out i walked among birches nothing but blank pages overtook milkweed giving birth to clouds

Dave Bonta

Into the Open

an empty space is still data my phone reminds me no space is truly empty a falling leaf reminds me the time of long shadows has come ‘round again cedar waxwings whistle through bare branches the low sun catches on wings in lieu of leaves rests in a red oak undressing in the wind and flickers like an angel resisting temptation to follow the leaves down spinning spiralling

Dave Bonta

Inside Out

the forest is like a house emptied by burglars when i am old i hope to be this free and open with fire stolen from the sun but where have all the caterpillars gone hungry hungry long time passing they’re all in uniform and dormant now overwintering as sex machines hemolymph flooded with glycerol so ice won’t form

Dave Bonta

Forestry

morning of soft sun and old gold with the distant yelping of trucks going backwards the sound of limestone being ground down and a silent jay going from oak to oak throat pouch filled with acorns it flies off east i follow animal paths into the afternoon a gray squirrel buries an acorn under a laurel bush sees me watching and digs it up again

Dave Bonta

Poem Beginning with a Line by Farough Farrokhzad

let us believe in the ruined gardens of imagination even in autumn rain there’s still such radiance leaves underfoot whisper my wishbone song really just a rhythm imposed on the slow fires of decay but now church bells make for a glistening listen the dead have nothing and everything to do with the emptiness of numbers their carnival is upon us scarlet oaks glowing

Dave Bonta

Lookout

fall colors a yellowjacket’s unsteady flight

Dave Bonta

Bell’s Gap

a woodpecker’s speckled woods weathering novemberly down to embers in the soothills of the alleghenies where victorians went on elegant excursions railroad logging a hundred summers in a day now free to go fluttering muttering off earthward warm worm

Dave Bonta

Deep Structure

day breaks like a wishbone how lucky that the longer portion remains with us in darkness under the interstate in that dull interminable thunder a school of salmon- colored leaves stream down from trees given scraps of now- worthless land a cylindrical concrete pier

Dave Bonta

Some Disassembly Required

perhaps one wouldn’t call it metamorphosis the shift of sandstone back into sand prized free by frost or fungal enzymes grain by grain more gradual than an hourglass though so much less reversible but why only prize changes made under pressure it’s years of weather that unfather us daily hammer blows that shape our addictions

Dave Bonta

In the Sticks

everything forks and branches you can’t get there from here unless you go sideways first like a knight in chess or a long-tailed weasel hunting in the stiltgrass you must run out of luck or lumber get saved by a discount preacher behind the barbecue shack lose an argument with the moss wonder what horrors lie hidden beneath your feet wrapped in duct tape sealed in mason jars

Dave Bonta

Spring snow: sixteen snapshots

Spring snow: the night before, I woke to the sound of swans Spring snow: the spicebush outside my window captures more & more of the sky Spring snow: one mourning dove adds an extra half-note Spring snow: the soft ground sinks under my boots Spring snow: last year’s stalks of Oswego tea don fresh caps Spring snow:

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