Winter Triptych
I.
Wind rushes the house,
growls around corners,
doesn’t rest though night
has tumbled in. Lights
blinking, we wait
for the blizzard, hoping
the logs, the candles will last.
II.
Snow and light sculpt
the yard. A background,
a page fresh and new.
No fussing gusts, only the chimes
furred and frozen, oak and cedar
accepting the ephemeral. Ice
crystals rising inside our breaths.
III.
Slipping on re-frozen tire tracks,
slush shifting gritty and gray,
I watch blue skies, meager sun
re-form the layers: top crust cracking
into dirt or gravel, asphalt slick –
stiff fingers, runny noses tricking
our memories. Forgetting wonder.
- © KB Ballentine 2022
KB Ballentine’s seventh collection, Edge of the Echo, launched in 2021 with Iris Press. Her earlier books can be found with Blue Light Press, Middle Creek Publishing, and Celtic Cat Publishing. Published in North Dakota Quarterly, Atlanta Review and Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, and others, her work also appears in anthologies including I Heard a Cardinal Sing (2022), The Strategic Poet (2021), Pandemic Evolution (2021), and Carrying the Branch: Poets in Search of Peace (2017). Learn more at www.kbballentine.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment