Written by Dave Bonta on Nov 17, 2022 09:04 pm
ceiling
fan
spider
spinning
all night
Written by Luisa A. Igloria on Nov 17, 2022 07:12 pm
Today, a library and lounge in a building
next to a pond and fountain were dedicated
to the late father of a writer friend. His father
was a Physics professor in the university
where I teach. When he started teaching,
I must have been five years old; at that age,
the most urgent thing was either the itchy
sweater I was always made to wear, or how
my kindergarten teacher wouldn't let me go
to the bathroom until recess. But in the new
library, we stood in the space where students
will work on formulae or equations, next to six
mahogany bookcases. They're filled with books
like The Theory of Everything, The Quest to Explain
All Reality, Theoretical Mechanics of Particles
and Continua, or The Geometry of Spacetime.
Old colleagues and students stepped up with
stories—one said she wanted so badly to drop
the course; then was glad the professor wouldn't
let her. And I thought, this is what it can mean
for a life to connect. Right under the ceiling,
hundreds of wires all different colors ran through
the corridors, each with a different purpose. Circuits
were laid for heat, mechanics, light, electricity,
magnetism. And there must have been someone
in your life who once pointed out the chalk-white
stars, explained the shape and motion of bodies;
the energy of wind, the mysteries of water.
~ for Michael Khandelwal
Written by Dave Bonta on Nov 17, 2022 09:07 am
summer is dead
i found her green leaf body
at the foot of an oak
in the first snow
blanketing the valley
the smell of diesel
100 feet downridge
there’s a fallen nest
woven from strips of wild
gravevine bark
the trees are becoming
more and more vacant
though they shriek
and moan in the wind
i remember what jesus
said about new wine
and old wine skins
like this katydid lasting
long enough to be filled
with the unknown
like this spruce weeping
white beards of sap
from dozens of rows
of sapsucker-drilled wells
and all those wounds
somehow still open
summer is dead
they crucified her
two deer bound past
without seeing me
pursued as they are
by one with antlers
holding them high
almost shining
his rack as the hunters call it
his naked tree
