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Dave Bonta
it’s easy to stop seeing
what’s on the horizon
people in the valley
don’t really believe in it
what summer makes seem
no less than a mountain
winter shows as it is
no more than a hill
from my front porch
a sudden influx of sky
after the leaves fall
look it’s snowing
the flakes come to settle
in their multitudes
well into the evening
lightness piling up
and she's already talking to someone else
pretty and funny and full of witty conversation
they're just phone calls and text messages
but every ring sends an ache in my heart
a jolt down my spine
i can feel it looming just over the horizon
the inevitable distancing as i'm once again left behind
for a shiny new toy
What we came to expect from that gradual cadence
was the feeling that nothing remained
to be said, a harbinger
of colder and more desolate fortunes.
"She buys more socks." As if that sudden switch
to the present tense were a panacea
for the glum architecture...
not only these dark corners
but also those which already were
bright as day.
Which was the least of my extrapolations.
The thickets, their self-indulgent fragments,
confronted my blazer; but more generally,
a slowness and a marked tendency
to fatigue, that generous euphemism,
took the cake.
Sound and beat swell
funnel of space
dragged in earth
planes eddy, the shaking
cold, fish jump the horizon
slats factory colors
we realize a finish
there is a tower a
vast dome
a dining car there
a sliding seats
sloped down
the girders truckload of stationwagons
a few benches at the sea
or hens crated
traffic island
A ridge of sand dunes barricades the rim
Of the horizon like a gilded bar
To roving sight; a lonely point, the brim
Of earth against the moaning surge. Afar
My glances wander, wistful, ill at ease
From longing to explore those far off seas.
The murmuring tide creeps up before my feet
And leaves a shell or two, a broken spray
Of strange sea growth; then to some chill retreat
In ocean’s depths it slowly ebbs away.
How blithely thought can trail the screaming terns
Beyond the boundaries that the eye discerns!
On the horizon looms that point beside
The pathless main, a prison door to me;
For I would follow on that restless tide
To lands remote beyond a shoreless sea;
I did not expect
to meet you here,
gazing
from this horizon.
Like black plunging dolphins with red bellies,
The steamers in herds
Swim through the choppy breakers
On this day of winds and clouds.
Wallowing and plunging,
They seek their path,
The smoke of their snorting
Hangs in the sky.
Like black plunging dolphins with red bellies,
The steamers pass,
Flapping their propellers
Salt with the spray.
Their iron sides glisten,
Their stays thrash:
Their funnels quiver
With the heat from beneath.
I can take mercerized cotton
And make a never-flower beautiful
By thinking of tulips growing in windowboxes;
I can work into cloth
A certain hushed softness
From an imagined scrutiny
Of a lily's skin,
And embroider conventional designs the better
For thinking of brick garden paths.
But if I go farther,
If I follow the path.
Fling out the gate,
Plunge one breathless thought over an horizon . . .
My hands lose their cunning.