not unlike the skin disease once known as the king’s evil that could only be cured by a king’s touch.
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.
These mountains
are full of hollows and riddled with mines: a geography of loss.
The way my skin cracks in winter
maybe I’ll molt.
Ask a vintner or a fromager:
few things are more festive than decay.
icy road
leaving the car in the care
of the low sun
The forests of my earliest childhood
are evergreen.
But fists are lonely
vulnerable things that can never match the strength of linked hands.
Lay me in a fist-sized hole
feathered with rime.
mountaintop pond
the blind dog lapping
at her reflection
“A dinosaur.”
Said with a dismissive tone, as if it should’ve known the sky was glass.
Neurons take a dendritic form
to maximize their receptivity to the lightning of thought.
Let’s be honest:
we were adrift long before we were at sea.
