Contemplative poems

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

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Dave Bonta

The Hollow (46)

at the bottom of the mountain a small mountain of gravel riprap just enough soil for anise root where the hollow empties its silence into the gap old cellar holes locked gate stroking the touch-me-nots so they burst

Dave Bonta

The Hollow (43)

200 years old or ten thousand former road/streambed rhododendron trunk bare as high as a starving deer’s neck can stretch elevation measured by the number of unripe spikenard berries slow-creeping slope all the tree boles curved to keep their balance

Dave Bonta

The Hollow (42)

whispering against the road from both sides endless water backhoe toothmarks our complicated relationship with the mountain gabion wall the quarried stones softening with moss at last a beech log’s pale skin beginning to rupture that rich ferment

Dave Bonta

The Hollow (41)

38 years old the one-acre blowdown is all grown up how big was that wind twin basswood trunks still stretch wide one beech limb has grown back into the tree the storm was too much they heard the wind a half mile away the hollow’s own howl

Dave Bonta

The Hollow (40)

wood nettles that angry guy who hacked at them with his hatchet becoming the place of my fisher sighting foamflower patch the long moment after it vanished fishing for its name wilder hills and deeper hollows the fisher’s undulating gait

Dave Bonta

The Hollow (39)

standing among the fallen tuliptrees “common though not abundant” Liriodendron tulipifera massive trunks the mechanics of rising sap still a mystery riffle-patterned bark enough stillness for algae

Dave Bonta

The Hollow (37)

among straight ascenders an ancient grapevine’s grave accent the last white asters the woods are darkest just before the fall weak sunlight witch hazel beginning to extrude its rays so green you’d think it’s still spring Christmas fern

Dave Bonta

The Hollow (35)

after failing this year to blossom Clintonia leaves seedhead the two sterile florets’ showy bracts the mountain road’s one straight stretch turning to look back headwater stream a dark and slender mink’s road

Dave Bonta

The Hollow (34)

25 years since the snow that brought it down measured in moss after the chainsaw the silence big as ever windthrow ice storm blizzard where are the canopy gaps of yesteryear one small bird to salvage all those logs winter wren song

Dave Bonta

The Hollow (30)

standing beside its toppled twin cucumber magnolia beneath the white oak 200-year old charcoal crumbles from the bank the bright red club’s rotten handle jack-in-the-pulpit jack or jill transitioning to female from the pulpit

Dave Bonta

The Hollow (27)

another ash I never noticed lit up by the sun its death let in for so many years I saw it as an eye island in the stream don’t call them Indian graves these mounds that once held roots God or microbes everywhere you look undiscovered

Dave Bonta

The Hollow (26)

that gap between crowns of adjacent trees and what goes on underground just one fling on the way up fox grape Solomon’s seal withered leaves curl around the glossy black drupe crustose lichen on a rock its complex inner life

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