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Dave Bonta
That gobbling on the ridge:
turkey, or turkey hunter?
That whistle: factory or train?
I follow a vole’s progress
by watching where the grass trembles—
until a breeze springs up.
How the weasel must hate the wind!
And how it must strive to sound
exactly like it.
The sun slips over
the gray pelt of a vole zipping
from one hole to another
and catches on a distant gleam
of frost-heaved flotsam,
luring me to go look.
A beer bottle at the base of a tree
rests in a cradle of leaves,
bluer than the sky.
Like varicose veins
in the thinning snow, the dark
tunnels of the voles.
My garbage is nothing
but coffee grounds, each morning
wrapped in its filter-shroud.
I miss summer:
those small millipedes that glide
across the bathroom floor.