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Dave Bonta
First axe then lightning on
a million acres of dry slash:
the state’s namesake forests
burned & burned.
Then flood: with no roots
to hold the rains, hillsides slid,
rivers raged, cellars
filled with ashy gray mud.
The last lion in Pennsylvania
was starving, bones
visible under her hide
when they found her
at the end of a line
of incriminating footprints,
near a rocky outcropping
called the Pinnacle.
I remember almost every moment,
but when I ask you,
you just don't answer.
I don't know how you cannot remember our first year together.
But somehow you do,
and that's really confusing.
My heart shriveled up and died when I learnt,
but it's nothing new to me.
It's happened countless times before,
what's one more time?
I remember the first time we kissed,
now I'm wondering if it even matters to you.
I remember everything,
big or small.
But you can't even remember our best Christmas together.
You who can usually remember everything,
If not fire then
flood
if not flood then
fire
a bitter aftertaste
in the water
Unemployed men
in winter skin & hunger
hiring out
to the state
1.25 an hr
the rest of the countryside
careless
with matches & overloaded
dams
Blood has been harder to dam back than water.
Just when we think we have it impounded safe
Behind new barrier walls (and let it chafe!),
It breaks away in some new kind of slaughter.
We choose to say it is let loose by the devil;
But power of blood itself releases blood.
It goes by might of being such a flood
Held high at so unnatural a level.
It will have outlet, brave and not so brave.
Weapons of war and implements of peace
Are but the points at which it finds release.
And now it is once more the tidal wave
That when it has swept by leaves summits stained.
Oh, blood will out. It cannot be contained.
on both sides
of the old wood fence
flooded field
And all hours long, the town
Roars like a beast in a cave
That is wounded there
And like to drown;
While days rush, wave after wave
On its lair.
An invisible woe unseals
The flood, so it passes beyond
All bounds: the great old city
Recumbent roars as it feels
The foamy paw of the pond
Reach from immensity.
But all that it can do
Now, as the tide rises,
Is to listen and hear the grim
Waves crash like thunder through
The soul shall be drowned in the flood
Of mounting blood.
Be strong at least
To resist Love,
Except at his feast.