Twenty words, if you count the ampersand, and a whole turning of the year fits inside them. Dave Bonta's "Horsebalm" gives a date, an object and a sensation, and then stops. The date is "three days from the solstice," the object is a "shriveled leaf," and the sensation is a smell that is "still" there, "faintly of lemon." Everything else is left to the reader.
The poem is about persistence at the edge of loss. The leaf is dried up and past its prime, and the solstice is a hinge moment when the light is at an extreme and about to reverse. The poem doesn't say which solstice, but a shriveled leaf suggests the dark end of the year, and I'd read it that way. Even so, the phrase "three days from" is pleasantly slippery. It could mean three days before the solstice or three days after, so the poem stays suspended just outside the turning point. The leaf, meanwhile, has already gone through its own ending and still keeps something back. Its scent is a small, private proof that life leaves traces after its visible form has collapsed.
The title does quiet work here. The poem never names the plant, so "Horsebalm" has to carry that information. From the lemon scent we can infer the leaf belongs to the plant of that name, which is commonly described as lemon-scented, though the poem itself only implies it. The word is a nice compound. "Horse" suggests something coarse, large and farmyard, while "balm" suggests soothing and healing. That mix of rough and tender matches the poem's mood, in which a brittle, ugly object offers a gentle comfort.
The form is tiny, and its three short lines recall the shape of a haiku. It doesn't follow the strict pattern, though. The first line has six syllables, the second seven and the third five, so the poem sits close to the traditional form without obeying it. There is no rhyme. Instead, the music comes from sound repetition. The first two lines are thick with s and sh sounds: "solstice," "shriveled," "still," "smells." The hiss is dry and papery, like the leaf itself. Then the last line softens into the liquid l's and f of "faintly of lemon," and the harshness gives way to something light and sweet. The sound moves in the same direction as the meaning, from brittle to fragrant.
The line breaks are just as careful. The second line ends on "smells," which on its own could be an unpleasant word. We might expect something rotten from a shriveled leaf. Then the third line arrives with "faintly," which delays and qualifies the smell, and "lemon" turns the expectation around. The word "faintly" also performs what it describes, because it comes after a pause and so reaches us a little quietly, the way a weak scent does. The ampersand adds another small effect. It is quicker and more casual than "and," like something jotted in a field notebook, and it links the calendar fact to the sensory one without ceremony. The poem sounds like a note made in passing, which makes its quiet wonder feel unforced.
The word "still" is the poem's hinge. It means "continuing to" ("still smells"), but it also suggests stillness, the motionless winter air and the inert leaf. One word holds both persistence and quiet. The poem also appeals to smell, the sense most tied to memory, and the lemon is a bright, summery note set against the shortest days. Without saying so, the poem implies that warmth and light survive in some form even at the darkest point.
The poem matters for what it asks of the reader. It makes no argument about death or renewal. It offers one small observation and trusts us to feel its weight. In doing so it teaches a kind of attention, the habit of picking up a dead leaf, bringing it to your nose and finding that it hasn't given up. A poem this short can't be skimmed without being missed. Slowing down to read it is the same act of noticing that the speaker performs.