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Dave Bonta
all around the great dead oak
as darkness falls
a fisher dances
hunting white-footed mice
a dark sine curve
against the snow
that is also somehow able
to freeze for long minutes
crouching pouncing
coming up empty
it is only i sitting across
the frozen pond
who leaves feeling
fuller than before
filled i suppose with seasonally
appropriate gratitude
a porcupine puts
one foot in
As the crescent moon ripples and breaks apart, the mountaintop pool suddenly seems cavernous, its tree reflections trailing into the abyss. I stand to leave and the illusion passes. A bat nearly the same shade of darkness as the forest careens in and out of vision. The short path to the woods’ edge seems to have doubled in length, but this of course is another illusion. As is the bobcat quality of that snarl I just heard from the spruce grove.
The night makes everything grow: half-seen, fuzzy outlines dissolve, and the darkness itself becomes the only upward limit on size. Names and identities we wear by day become as loose-fitting as nightgowns or pajamas.
I didn’t go to bars or restaurants all that often, but I still miss them. Longing is all about the unattainable, isn’t it? I often find myself out restlessly walking around the mountain instead.
so much more
than one can hear
hermit thrush
I like walking at dusk because it is then that the buzzing stops. I don’t mind the whine of a mosquito, but as long as I can remember, I’ve been bothered by flies. Too many of them and my nose starts to itch uncontrollably, I don’t know why. And nothing is more horrifying than some dead animal heaving with maggots.
ephemeral pond
raccoon footprints fill in
with tadpoles
counting the rings
in the wood frog pond
another year
Mayapples are coming up:
green parasols shedding
the soil as they open.
A coyote trots across the road,
looking back
over its shoulder.
Above the trembling surface
of the vernal pond,
the first warblers’ buzzy songs.
In small, murky ponds
that appear each spring
along the ridge crest,
dozens of wood frogs
float through the reflected treetops,
lust blatting from each fat throat.
Get too close and the show stops.
Another step and they vanish
into strings of bubbles.
Here I am,
sitting in the dark
alone next to the turtle pond.
There is no rhyme,
no reason,
and no sense
as the turtles are asleep.
I stay up late
for no purpose at all
and my mind is oft adrift;
I worry for the future
about the past
and evermore the present,
but I can't make up my mind
and the turtles are asleep.
Under muse of calls
Not ever to let it be
i think of silverfish
skittering across a pond
ripples
sky and trees
but not disturbing them
as when it struck you
it struck me
the mind mirrored world
a way out of unhappiness
not happy
as one might say: I'm
so happy. but a depth
to hold
the various possibilities
your face, mine
It’s quiet here. The sky is cloudless. A moth flutters on
the most subtle of breezes. There’s barely a ripple on the
water. If reflections could speak, they would speak of
silence, of harmony and of deep introspection. Locked in
the aquatic mirror, a world of wonder stands fully
exposed to this image of itself. There is no judgment, no
criticism no need for redemption, just a picture of what is
here and now, a picture sprinkled with lily pads and
geese, a peaceful scene at perfect ease...
Bathed in echoes from the surface of the pond, each tree,
each reed, each leaf lives a fleeting second life entranced
in the liquid glass. The moth settles on a blade of marshgrass.
Gray were the rushes
Beside the budless bushes,
Green-patched the pond.
The lark had left soaring
Though yet the sun was pouring
His gold here and beyond.
Bramble-branches held me,
But had they not compelled me
Yet had I lingered there
Hearing the frogs and then
Watching the water-hen
That stared back at my stare.
There amid the bushes
Were blackbird's nests and thrush's,
Soon to be hidden
In leaves on green leaves thickening,
Stuff of the moon
Runs on the lapping sand
Out to the longest shadows.
Under the curving willows,
And round the creep of the wave line,
Fluxions of yellow and dusk on the waters
Make a wide dreaming pansy of an old pond in the night.
Cold, wet leaves
Floating on moss-coloured water,
And the croaking of frogs —
Cracked bell-notes in the twilight.