Am meisten gelesen ▸
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
morning of soft sun
and old gold
with the distant yelping
of trucks going backwards
the sound of limestone
being ground down
and a silent jay
going from oak to oak
throat pouch filled with acorns
it flies off east
i follow animal paths
into the afternoon
a gray squirrel buries an acorn
under a laurel bush
sees me watching
and digs it up again
bindweed seeds get high
in a gray squirrel’s gut
Convolvus winding
into a green sky
the ghetto of goldfinches
and spiderling balloonists
boundless
squirrel like a primate ancestor
what gets traded away
for a gift of visions
which buried treasure maps
slip from memory
allowing scatter-
hoarded acorns to sprout
in your gray squirrel mind-
turned-world
I eat my enemies by the handful:
spicy leaves of the invasive
garlic mustard.
Back home, I strip
in front of the mirror,
checking for ticks.
A squirrel walks past the window
with bulging cheeks,
carrying one of her young.
In all this blankness,
a squirrel finds the precise spot
it buried a nut.
Breaking trail with snowshoes,
I choose to believe
I’m half-floating, not half-sinking.
Clumps of snow sail off the trees,
making a random scatter
of oblong prints.
The squirrel’s tracks end
in a smudge of blood on the snow,
one tuft of fur
and the long furrow
its dangling tail drew
beside the fox’s footprints.
Alone in the field,
a bulldozer lowers its blade
to a white and heavy harvest.
The squirrel says: the trees
in which I have slept
are the color of the sun.
Leafless now and clear
all likely pathways. The tree peers
bleary-eyed through every scar
that used to be a leaf,
she is stiff and cold
and full of old voices.
I rub my face and neck against
her bark: wake up!
My tail trembles.
I am rainwater running
up and down the trunk,
from tree to tree I am wind
leaping, making the treetops sway.
You who stand beneath me,
Look up at me for a while -
While you smell, breath in deep
The fragrance of my little flowers.
Did it hurt when the flower fell
On your head, my humble gift,
Here, I bend a branch of mine,
Hold, pluck the succulent fruit
For your child, a present from me.
Lean on to me, though my skin is rough,
But feel my heart that throbs for you
My veins full of the blood of love.
Here, I fan you with my leaves,
Lest you feel tired in the heat.
Did it hurt when you cut
Chopped off the branches
I’ve watched squirrels my whole life. They
inhabit a zone just outside domesticity, are
diplomatically wild. They worry and stare,
behaviors of which I approve. They horde
forgetfully, gorge daintily. Sometimes
they just stop. And fall asleep, mid-day,
on a limb or a fence post, all energy
drained. Sometimes frenzy
possesses them—something to do
with sex or fleas—mad bursts of wants
followed by a frozen pose. Squirrels
are not everything I had hoped wilderness
to be. They are though everything
I would want squirrels to be, and
slightly more, for there’s always
just one more surprise ready to leap
The Managed Fund
Crows guarded his retirement plan.
They marched around its perimeter.
Squirrels managed the fund.
They wore small green visors,
used their cheeks as briefcases,
embezzled by accident, forgetting
where they buried the dividends.
Fixed Income
One day so dispirited by his work
was he that he decided to retire.
He asked to begin to withdraw
his pension. The account-manager,
a raccoon, presented a box to him,
removed the lid, and waddled away.
The new pensioner peered in.
Come play with me;
Why should you run
Through the shaking tree
As though I'd a gun
To strike you dead?
When all I would do
Is to scratch your head
And let you go.
Being out of heart with government
I took a broken root to fling
Where the proud, wayward squirrel went,
Taking delight that he could spring;
And he, with that low whinnying sound
That is like laughter, sprang again
And so to the other tree at a bound.
Nor the tame will, nor timid brain,
Bred that fierce tooth and cleanly limb
And threw him up to laugh on the bough;
No government appointed him.