if it means being always prepared for a change in the wind.
Author: Dave Bonta
I live in an Appalachian hollow in the Juniata watershed of central Pennsylvania, and spend a great deal of time walking in the woods. My books of poetry include FAILED STATE: HAIBUN, ICE MOUNTAIN: AN ELEGY, BREAKDOWN: BANJO POEMS, and ODES TO TOOLS.
throbbing
a hundred ways at once—
wood frog party
spring equinox
the tracks of the wind
have yet to melt
A witch hazel growing beside the road
improvises a slow ode to travel.
Still life with landscape.
Self-portrait as nude.
Illuminated spreadsheet.
Frozen watercolor.
The white dwarf’s embrace of its black hole partner is so close,
it sends headline writers into hyperdrive. To some, the black hole is predatory; to others, the star is insane. But what if it’s love?
On this day of small storms,
that GIF of the sun hurtling through space and the spiraling tracks of its planets.
The music entered me.
But it wasn’t until I got up to dance that I entered the music.
This coiled resistance may become a spring—
the first arabesque of a new wild.
mountainside
echoing with tundra swans
a dead deer
A small box of leftover parts
from all the broken things I tried to fix.
In every quest narrative, it’s the very beginning that I like—
before the first adversaries appear, when the path is still a magic carpet and has yet to reveal its serpentine coils.
