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Dave Bonta
low tide
we comb the ancient peat
for footprints
drowned forest
the gull’s cry turns eldritch
undead stumps
4000 years later
sprout bladderwrack
our shared excitement
at scraps of root-bark
seaside town
all the colors of ice cream
against the Atlantic
the high street is already
lower than the beach
Tisha B’Av just past
glossy orange
to mark the hatchet-cut scars
property line
beyond the line trees
the same old view
chestnut oak seedling
“leave no trace”
only my footprints now
where spring beauties bloomed
black locust grove
the leaf miners have laid bare
a rich vein of sky
Nothing is more innocent than snow.
It says: I am not of your world.
We wonder: What child is this,
what wool, what milk?
Then we look back & see our footprints
multiplying behind us.
Maybe this is nothing but a white flag.
But whose turn is it to surrender?
New snow falls & fills the footprints in.
We feel we are being measured for immaculate shoes.
we both, wanted, to be headless mannequins
searching for ways to silence the noise upstairs
while the remainder of the body
did what the body does.
we wanted the mind
to wash the hands
while the hands
did what hands do.
maybe as kids
every print our feet made
was something inconceivable,
but eventually we saw wrinkles,
and the road not taken
already had hand-printed cement,
gum-stuck in the underneaths,
and what’s the point in walking
As I went down the hill along the wall
There was a gate I had leaned at for the view
And had just turned from when I first saw you
As you came up the hill. We met. But all
We did that day was mingle great and small
Footprints in summer dust as if we drew
The figure of our being less than two
But more than one as yet. Your parasol
Pointed the decimal off with one deep thrust.
And all the time we talked you seemed to see
Something down there to smile at in the dust
(Oh, it was without prejudice to me!)
Afterward I went past what you had passed
Before we met and you what I had passed.
The walking man studies the footprints he’s made in the
freshly-fallen snow, footprints meandering back through
time, back through time with his thoughts. There he finds
a boy playing by a stream, happy as a boy can be. He
walks over and says, “Hello.” The boy doesn’t hear. He
wants to say “remember this” but all he can do is watch
for a while as the child works his way along the bank and
finally out of sight.
His thoughts lead back to a grassy field where a young
man tosses hay bales onto a wagon. The man in the snow
wants to shout “be careful” but again can only watch as
the farm cart passes by. He knows the young man has no
reason to listen to the wind. Turning up his collar, he
shrugs away the cold.