Les plus lus ▸
Dave Bonta
this morning light
will right all
will make half a head
into a little room
and a whole
member into rope
will free a peach to debauch
a glass of wine
and give me a now
to be a patient of
this light like blood
in a simple lily
I died with the word I on my lips.
It only took a moment,
a slight pause as if for a line-
break or a comma, a panicked thought
or the time required for an 8-ball
to cross the baize. I died,
and the cities I harbor gave way
to squalid refugee camps
where the moon went
through a new phase
of never getting out of bed.
They fed it on thin broth
that tasted like a landlocked sea.
And there I floated like Moses
in my open casket waiting to be
adopted by Mother Earth—
Even the gods love jokes*
as sunset bleeds crimson
across the Olympics;
makes lemonade from smog,
while avalanche lilies
remain patient under
the retreating snowlines.
Wildflowers blooming
dazzle the beholder,
blind to nature’s trauma.
No longer staunch sentries,
glaciers shrink from duty,
exposing human faults.
Even the gods love jokes.
Why am I not laughing?
Ten Day Lilies
outside my window,
dressed in orange.
The shining line of motors,
The swaying motor-bus,
The prancing dancing horses
Are passing by for us.
The sunlight on the steeple,
The toys we stop to see,
The smiling passing people
Are all for you and me.
"I love you and I love you!"--
"And oh, I love you, too!"--
"All of the flower girl's lilies
Were only grown for you!"
Fifth Avenue and April
And love and lack of care--
The world is mad with music
Too beautiful to bear.
The lilies sag with rain-drops:
Their petals hold fire that does not break out.
(As though it slept between vapor-silk
It could not burn).
And a young breeze stumbles upon the lilies
And strokes them with his spinning hands....
The lilies and the young breeze are not unlike
Your silence and the rush of soft words breaking it.
Reed,
slashed and torn
but doubly rich--
such great heads as yours
drift upon temple-steps,
but you are shattered
in the wind.
Myrtle-bark
is flecked from you,
scales are dashed
from your stem,
sand cuts your petal,
furrows it with hard edge,
like flint
on a bright stone.
Yet though the whole wind
Where the slow river
meets the tide,
a red swan lifts red wings
and darker beak,
and underneath the purple down
of his soft breast
uncurls his coral feet.
Through the deep purple
of the dying heat
of sun and mist,
the level ray of sun-beam
has caressed
the lily with dark breast,
and flecked with richer gold
its golden crest.
Where the slow lifting
A grave is all too weak a thing
To hold my fancy long;
I’ll bear a blossom with the spring,
Or be a blackbird’s song,
I think that I shall fade with ease,
Melt into earth like snow,
Be food for hungry, growing trees,
Or help the lilies blow.
And if my love should lonely walk,
Quite of my nearness fain,
I may come back to her, and talk
In liquid words of rain.
Your lips are like a southern lily red,
Wet with the soft rain-kisses of the night,
In which the brown bee buries deep its head,
When still the dawn’s a silver sea of light.
Your lips betray the secret of your soul,
The dark delicious essence that is you,
A mystery of life, the flaming goal
I seek through mazy pathways strange and new.
Your lips are the red symbol of a dream.
What visions of warm lilies they impart,
That line the green bank of a fair blue stream,
With butterflies and bees close to each heart!
Brown bees that murmur sounds of music rare,
That softly fall upon the languorous breeze,
Wafting them gently on the quiet air
Among untended avenues of trees.
Far from this foreign Easter damp and chilly
My soul steals to a pear-shaped plot of ground,
Where gleamed the lilac-tinted Easter lily
Soft-scented in the air for yards around;
Alone, without a hint of guardian leaf!
Just like a fragile bell of silver rime,
It burst the tomb for freedom sweet and brief
In the young pregnant year at Eastertime;
And many thought it was a sacred sign,
And some called it the resurrection flower;
And I, a pagan, worshiped at its shrine,
Yielding my heart unto its perfumed power.
Fireflies flicker in the tops of trees.
Flicker in the lower branches.
Skim along the ground.
Over the moon-white lilies
Is a flashing and ceasing of small, lemon-green stars.
As you lean against me,
Moon-white,
The air all about you
Is slit, and pricked, and pointed with sparkles of lemon-green flame
Starting out of a background of vague, blue trees.