7/52: hello, tree spirit

Hello, tree spirit
I know you are following me,
following me in the woods.

Do you love me more than the others?
You hide treasures along the foot path:
moss on an old log,
three leaves laid just so,
a mushroom blooming like a young woman.

Are these for me? Only for me?
Or do you share your secrets
with whomever happens along?
The old man with the damn dog
that should be on a leash;
the couple running in spandex
with iPods plugged in their ears -
together, alone;
the three college boys smoking weed
as if no one had smoked weed in the woods
before them.

How do they deserve your attention
when I walk so slowly
and I can feel you following me,
just behind my peripheral.

Do you share your secrets with them
when I do not come for days?
Do you share your secrets with them
when I am not clever enough to see
the gifts you have placed in the shadow,
or in the glinter light?

Be faithful to me, tree spirit.
I am but a mortal, with a mortal man's years.
Be faithful to me,
follow me, only me, in the woods,
and I will love you when I am old.

When I am gone, lay your treasures
by my footprints
grown thin with time.

---

Audio: https://soundcloud.com/mbonica/hello-tree-spirit

6/52: onions

To caramelize the onions properly

requires a certain state of mind.

One can't be holding on to ancient pain

or the onions, sensing your anger,

burn black and hard.

You must acknowledge the imperfections

of your life, the dreams that will not now

at midlife come true,
and let them go
like a balloon accidentally released
from a child's hand.

You must stir steadily, regularly,
with a wooden spoon on the cast iron pan
feeling the tension ease out
of the longitudinal slices
while the aroma evolves
and fills the kitchen.

Another balloon drifts away carrying with it
worries about next week's meeting,

and another about your daughter's future.

Stir, stir,
there is time for all that later.


audio: https://soundcloud.com/mbonica/onions

5/52: Not of this planet

I am not if this planet,
I feel I must tell you
because today is Tuesday,
and it is raining.

I've heard rumor that you are also
a stranger from afar.
Isn't it odd that we would meet here
of all places,

so far from home.

4/52: Refined

Pour it into a bottle and cork it,

carry it down to the cellar where no one can see it.

In the darkness lay it down,

let the fermentation process eat away
all the sweetness of memory,

until only the refined
blood red bitterness remains.

3/52: other days

The winter sun is white and blinding
but gives no hint of what it is feeling.

My toes are numb, the cold seeping up
through the leather from the pavement.

Head down against the generous wind,
hands deep in pockets

I think of other days and other places.

2/52: made new, again

The trail's rocks and roots and worn dirt
are blanketed with snow

pressed unevenly flat by boots and skis
dog paws and deer hooves. 

This is a place entirely different
from what it was in the fall 

when the leaves had papered the way; 

from the summer 

when the deer flies relentlessly pursued us;
from the spring 

when the melt made primordial mud. 

So there you are now,
the winter sun white and low
bitter wind on your cheek
in this place made new, again.

1/52: the heart is a relative instrument

the heart is a relative instrument:
it bends time
like Einstein.

the heart thrums out
a bass line of ancient grief
that bubbles up unbidden
like oil in the sands,
the buried remains of a life from
a thousand thousand years ago.

the heart is riddled with worm holes
(this heart)
and time is curved around
like your forefinger and thumb
creating a pincer
across which memory leaps.

the heart is a relative instrument
and it plays this song forever
and also only for a year.

audio: https://soundcloud.com/mbonica/the-heart-is-a-relative-instrument