Dave Bonta

Two years later, the branch still dangles upside-down above the forest floor. A hummingbird pauses over a tansy and taps it with her bill.

Scattered bird calls at dawn give the impression of a distant chorus, the way trees on a savanna blend into a false forest a half mile away.

A chipmunk’s steady drip. How many years have I been sitting here? I remember each stage in the lichen’s conquest of the springhouse roof.

The jesters’ caps on the topheading garlic have begun to split, revealing dense clusters of miniature selves. A raven’s mechanical laughter.

The misty sunrise puts me in a Hallmark mood: Roses are brown,/ violets, long dead./ This coffee is bitter/ and goes straight to my head.

Soapwort, self-heal, mullein, Rudbeckia, butterfly weed: my garden exemplifies the messiness of any organization dominated by volunteers.

Come hummingbird and bring some glitter to this damp gray morning, buzz around the bergamot, pizzazz at the beebalm’s one bedraggled bloom.

Gray and misty. A common yellowthroat keeps caroling back to a Carolina wren, until I have trouble remembering which “witchedy” is which.

The tansy heads beside the porch have grown eyes: clear beads at the center of each dense sun. A faint haze of rain thickens into pelt.

A bluebird warbles in the darkness. Eyelids heavy with hours of missing sleep, I squint into the spreading stain of light.

A morning cold as autumn. At intervals, at the woods’ edge, a red-tailed hawk, orange light, the song of a wood thrush. Here and gone.

Half-burp, half-grunt, this utterance of a mother deer to her playful fawns. Twin leaves flutter to the ground like wings of a green bird.

Gray sky, gray titmouse descending the gray ladder of dead elm branches, pausing to swipe its bill against each as if sharpening a blade.

The rabbit at the edge of the driveway seems unconcerned about my presence until a house wren starts up an alarmist propaganda campaign.