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Dave Bonta
paper birch trees can only bend
so far before they break
under the weight of freezing rain
rhododendron leaves
tough as old scrolls are stripped
by starving deer
but some always resprout from the roots
having who knows how many
lifetimes of practice
What would the wind do
without the daffodils’ yellow
hoopla of blooms?
Tree leaves are still
packed tight as gunpowder
in their slim cartridges.
When the wind brings
the rumor of a storm,
only the rhododendron turns pale.
Melting snow reveals
the catacombs of rodents.
It’s been a long winter.
Starving deer strip
rhododendrons of their tough,
cold-curled tongues.
Hundred-year-old hemlocks
lose their needles to an insect
thinner than a thread.
She moves in spring
as one who
has carried herself
all winter among
famous people.
Yet she does
her own housework;
knows, as her
ancestors knew,
to spread white wash
over rhododendrons
in bright sun, like
remnants of snow —
glimpses, which some
have seen, of
the mountain,