collects enough leaves to make its own woods
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.
ground pines
craters have melted around their torch-shaped cones
dead locust bark
alive with color in between the cracks
bone-white sticks
trapped in the cross-hatch foliage new blue ice
green ice
caps the vernal pond it’s January
jade plant leaves
glow their brightest in the low winter light
corrugated pipe
an ancient beach
on the sandstone ridge we still stoop for baubles
goldenrod stalks
where bees hummed in August sparkles on the snow
foggy woods
the sassafras follows a crooked route to the sky
a tree too tall to stay
shadows of six-inch weeds stripe the stump
in the spotlight’s glare
the dark sky dissolves into snowflakes
