Contemplative poems

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

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Dave Bonta

The Hollow (25)

leaning this way or that forest-dwelling goldenrod not a mere patch but a stand the black cohosh fairy bells berried under their leaves naked-flowered tick trefoil “leaflets three” but only the name itches

Dave Bonta

The Hollow (24)

salamander under the lifted rock that frozen moment turtleheads self-consciously closing my mouth borer-killed woodpecker-stripped white ashes left behind the salamander’s tail goes on wriggling

Dave Bonta

The Hollow (23)

spicebush fills the opening the big birch left that allspice scent “heteromorphic self-incompatibility” partridgeberry’s red pills END OF PUBLIC ACCESS sun shining right through the plastic sign where the road crosses the creek a crayfish walking upstream

Dave Bonta

The Hollow (21)

old corral two years for horses 47 for trees too red half the maple’s leaves are poison ivy unchanged for 180 million autumns cinnamon ferns fraying scrolls illuminated with blue fungi black birch log

Dave Bonta

The Hollow (20)

one katydid this late in the season texting my wife migrant flycatcher swiping its beak back and forth on a bare branch a plastic toy football unearthed by the summer floods all the stream’s voices rain-softened ground even the gravel road has a bit of give

Dave Bonta

The Hollow (19)

spring house still keeping the milk- snakes cool the view from my childhood bedroom window I live in it now that walnut sprout we tried to kill with a frisbee eating in its shade cattails overwhelmed by tearthumb the purpose-driven life

Dave Bonta

The Hollow (17)

where we fought many a rotten tomato battle common snakeroot lawn and gardens gone back to meadow the buildings’ straight lines no more turning even the electric meter is digital now barn that once housed an elephant its great grey-green roof

Dave Bonta

The Hollow (16)

tree branches grow no lower than deer can reach woods’ edge rock piles from the 19th century the oak’s massive crown right-of-way the power pole all scratched up by bears hayscented fern losing ground to goldenrod a circling monarch

Dave Bonta

The Hollow (14)

off-trail in the woods in spiderweb season walking mindfully a loop of grapevine rising from the horsebalm patch the scent of lemons fall warbler I pish as if fluent in bird mysteries all its offspring on the other side of the deer fence the big pine

Dave Bonta

The Hollow (13)

downy rattlesnake plantain leaves always a start still twisted from its rush to leaf out lady’s-slipper orchid the blue-headed vireo’s vireo vireo sounds blue now pale pipes scorched and straightened by sex corpse plants

Dave Bonta

The Hollow (12)

a self-closing gate among 200-year-old oaks its rusty note smothered in leaf duff the violet’s self-fertilized alter ego ah to be both dapper and invisible striped wintergreen ignored by a pileated woodpecker the dust from her drill

Dave Bonta

The Hollow (11)

water standing in a raccoon footprint from here Plummer’s Hollow Run deer fence a sudden understory of shrubs and forbs protected from deer for nearly two decades now this plot thickens Smilax they say her thorniness drove a man wildflowery

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