KB Ballentine

KB Ballentine is the author of eight collections of poetry, including the 2023 Blue Light Press publication Spirit of Wild. Earlier books can be found with Iris Press, Blue Light Press, Middle Creek Publishing, and Celtic Cat Publishing. Published in North Dakota Quarterly, Atlanta Review and Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, among others, her work also appears in anthologies including Women Speak: Volume 8 (2022), Appalachia Unmasked (2022), The Strategic Poet: Honing the Craft (2021), I Thought I Heard a Cardinal Sing (2021), and Women Speak: Volume 7 (2021). Learn more at www.kbballentine.com.

Footprints in Ash

Even now the land is rewilding.
After the fires, wastelands

where towns and forests once bloomed,
clouds bloated with dust cough
                                         across a heated sky.

Scorpions skitter into crevices
to winnow the ashes, the grains
                                        of what remains.

Trees, doors, people – broken.
Hammers without handles,

pens without ink,
bone without marrow – (all) useless.
                                         Harbingers of what is to come.

But what of life past? Beauty
from memory, serenity from routine.

Poisoned with politics, we grope
in darkness and in light, hesitating

at the edge. Our gusto transformed
to granite, blood emulsified to sludge:

we become statues, ravaged
later or sooner.
                           The (re)wilding has begun.

All Lost Things

An agony of clouds stutters the blue,
rain skipping past again – summer’s dry breath
coughing clouds of dust.
Each day I choke, parched
in the emptiness of this room.

Oaks and poplars lean, clutch their green
as yellow veins through leaves.
Boxwood browns and splits,
hydrangeas stoop to kiss the cracked earth,
bees husbanding morning dew.

Gather, keep.
                     Gather and keep.

Crows yap and lurk, masked
in shadows until the heat
swells, grass a knife-edge underfoot.
Even cuts won’t bleed,
seeds that gel, obstruct my lungs.

Banks of grit slip toward the shriveling lake
where willows cradle Canada geese
and mallards rustle cattails, webbed feet
etching the dust. A trail
                                         like the sound of stars
                        guiding you home.