Les plus lus ▸
Dave Bonta
To think they were back there
all that time someone said
meaning the half-dozen snakes
of three different species
our bathroom remodeling project displaced
but my own thoughts kept dwelling
on that huge nest of razor blades
in the wall where the mirror had been
We propped up the roof and ripped
the bathroom walls out
keeping the fixtures intact
so that the shower stall
stood fully exposed
to the breeze and blowing rain
for half that summer
Ah
stars stare back
through bare branches
great beasts of foliage
gone to ground
rustle in the night
like restless currency
with nowhere to hide
the trees go dormant
to dream shadow lives
as modern dancers
now that it’s
too cold for snakes
who will caress the air
with lightning tongues
In the news, there’s a report that COVID-19 antibodies might not persist for more than a few weeks, and therefore that we can expect no herd immunity. Thinking about this, I barely hear the black-and-white warbler wheezing or the wood-pewee’s melancholy melisma. But then, from around the bend, a deer comes bounding straight towards me, doubtless trying to escape her nimbus of flies. I freeze. She stops 50 feet away and stares, moving her head from side to side for a better view. Human, or a tall stump? She makes up her mind to step warily around me. And I am a stump. I barely remember having my head in the clouds.
whose road is this
the tree snake’s
rootless flow
Six weeks after I planted potatoes, they are finally all up, the latest leaves no bigger than the ears of the mice I was sure had dug up and eaten them, especially after a series of holes appeared in each hill. But it’s been unusually cold this spring, and sprouts were simply taking their time. Our neighbors had urged patience, and they were right.
All this waiting to see what happens with the pandemic would be hard to bear if I didn’t also have something to wait for: a garden growing and changing day by day now, so that time doesn’t merely pass like some lifeless assembly line, but unfolds, ramifies, flourishes, bears fruit.
even as
I pull weeds my beard
keeps on growing
evening garden
bone zero
freezing in mid-stride
at a snake-shaped stick
Hooded, worm-eating,
cerulean, black-throated green.
I tick off the names
like prayer beads,
and later, when a black snake
rears up like an instant tree,
I remember all
the deadly false Edens,
the acres of glass.
Fresh from their hibernaculum
under the lawn beside
the stone well,
the male garter snakes
thread themselves into a throbbing knot
and pull apart, thwarted.
Where is she? They circle
like eddies of wind, old skins
whispering through the grass.
When I awoke one morning,
A snakecoiled on my head.
I asked, "What are you doing up there?"
It looked at me and said . . .
"What are you doing down there?"
I curtly replied, "I asked you first!"
The snake slithered down, unhappy with my reply, and covered my eyes.
So, I fell headfirst out of bed and it was the worst.
When I came to, the snake was gone.
My head felt angry, bathed in agony, from falling out of bed.
And so, when I awoke one morning,
a snake was coiled on my head.
Cut it right below at the stem
Where it bursts out of the soil
Seeking light and rain and air
The soil softened with the fallen yellowed leaves.
In the grove,
Warblers might be twittering
Pheasants would be muttering
Doves would be cooing
Lizards would be basking
In the sun.
The lone old cobra would be huddling,
Its last skin too, shed.
Above, the green slender long leaves
Would be chattering in the breeze
The poles, a-yellowed, a- green
Would be listening and smiling.
Snakes don't close their eyelids
'Coz snakes can't close their eyelids.
Fused, the eyelids keep the eyes open
From birth to postmortem.
Perhaps, as the rest of the body rots away,
The eyeballs would lie there forever,
Twinkling like forlorn stars.
Scared of the vacant look of death,we
Scramble to pull down our dead's eyelids.
Perhaps, if we didn't,
they would light up stars
In somebody else's eyes...
Bright ringed and beautiful
coral . dry
and death rattle in a pig/sty
and in the belly of a pig,
dead. Yet
you are beautiful . ringed
turn of the wrist
whole arm in the belly of a pig.
And snake does walk out, turns
winter to spring
in a pig/s
eye fixed upon nothing.
The power that snake has
that pig should love him.
Spring, and spring of her life also. She walks
to water to stand behind sedges, thinking of snakes.
And snakes come. First one, lazily, tail
sculling, head high, counterclockwise along
shore, and then another. And then -- another.
All going, she notes, the same way round. Next day,
incorrigible child, she rigs a black fly rod
with stout green line tied, butt end and tip end:
a snare. Back to the sun-long lake. The snakes
continue their rounds. She casts loop, she waits.
One comes, riding high in clear water, black eye
bright. Caught, the looping, livid thing
bends the rod double almost. On close inspection
she speaks its given name: common water snake.
Proudly she touches the twisting ribbon of flesh,