Three Poems by Paula Bonnell: Indrio Road, 60th Anniversary, A new Sight from a Familiar Place Shown to Me by a New Friend

Three Poems
by Paula Bonnell

Indrio Road

Trees reach toward each other,
making a lane of shadow
on this stretch of main road.
Paved and straight, busy
with cars, yet these arms
of live oak make a deep shelter
that recalls those drives
to central Texas --
the swimming-hole just
ahead, lemonade in
the cooler chilled by the
block of frozen chili thawing
in this heat, to be eaten
after sundown when
we camp in Palmetto State Park.

60th Anniversary

Two walkers click,
and as the porch
railing once supported
or the hall hat-
rack witnessed,
these contraptions
now assist
their kiss.

A New Sight from a Familiar Place
Shown to Me by a New Friend

It's not flat, Hutchinson Field, it falls
away toward the tidal mouth of the Neponset,
yet here on its rounded brow, we see --
not its steep descent to the expanse of marsh
which lies beneath the chin of this hill --
but the tall grass, the solitary
oaks, the edging of treetops beyond which,
on the other shore in heat-hazy air,
stand a few multistory buildings
overlooking the river as it lets
into the harbor.
And then, walking farther
on Adams Street -- past the crest at the Field
to where the hill begins to slope down, amid
houses where people have lived since clipper-
ship days -- through the bare branches
of a small tree, we can see, distantly north
of us, small from this vantage, the massed
forms of a white cityscape -- Boston as seen from
the corner of a high field, a city to
sail to, docks to return to, even from far-
distant Chinas, then and now.

Paula Bonnell has published two collections of poetry, Airs & Voices, selected for the Ciardi Prize by Mark Jarman and published by BkMk Press, and Message, MillCreek Press, which includes “Midwest,” read by Garrison Keillor on The Writer’s Almanac and “Eurydice,” chosen by Albert Goldbarth for a Poet Lore narrative poetry prize. The Spring 2012 issue of The Hopkins Review includes her “recurring dreams” and others are forthcoming in OBERON and The American Poetry Review.

Copyright 2012 Paula Bonnell . © This work is protected under the U.S. copyright laws. It may not be reproduced, reprinted, reused, or altered without the expressed written permission of the author.