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Dave Bonta
I watched an indigo bunting on
the topmost branch silhouetted
against the sky: blue
& still more blue. If I told you
all I could see was the yellow of
his bill, would you believe me?
In the bare crown of the elm tree
where a porcupine gnawed all winter,
a hummingbird perches with his back
to an indigo bunting. How odd to see him
sit so still so long, I think, though
his head pivots back & forth the whole
time. The bunting calls & calls.
Could this battered tree with
its foliage like a crazy woman’s skirt
hide two nests? A crow flies sideways,
green afternoon
and the fawn is off again
an art of being
Marcos (3)
Panting from the climb, eyes
on the trail, the friar
almost runs into
his guide, who stands
with an arm outstretched behind
to stop him short. Then
without turning
his head, hooks
a fold of Marcos’s habit
& tugs him forward like
a trout, breathes in his ear: Mirad.
Look.
Within arrow’s range down
the slope, beyond
the pines with
You will never again be this alone or alive,
Near your mother lying dead in the breakdown lane,
And you in the travel lane, trying to stand on spindly legs,
A fawn among the speeding headlights, mystified.
How did you get here? who licked you clean?
Will you, too, be hit? If not, who’ll suckle you?
Will a highway crew or highway crows recycle you?
I cannot sleep for thinking of you.
As I went through the marshes
a doe sprang out of the corn
and flashed up the hill-side
leaving her fawn.
On the sky-line
she moved round to watch,
she pricked a fine black blotch
on the sky.
I looked at her
and felt her watching;
I became a strange being.
Still, I had my right to be there with her,
Her nimble shadow trotting
along the sky-line, she
put back her fine, level-balanced head.
And I knew her.
Ah, I know what happiness is...!
It is a timid little fawn
Creeping softly up to me
For one caress, then gone
Before I’m through with it ...
Away, like dark from dawn!
Well I know what happiness is...!
It is the break of day that wears
A shining dew decked diadem ...
An aftermath of tears.
Fawn and dawn, emblems of joy ...
I’ve played with them for years,
And always they will slip away
Into the brush of another day.