KB Ballentine
NOW Shipping All the Way Through
ISBN: 9781962405096
$17.00 ($4.63 US Shipping)
KB Ballentine’s latest collection All the Way Through is now available from Sheila-Na-Gig Editions. Current books can be found with Blue Light Press, Iris 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 Women Speak (2023) and The Strategic Poet (2021). Learn more at www.kbballentine.com.
Out of Silence and Leaves
Autumn collapses overnight –
one shrug and the applause of leaves
is over, echoing through trim branches
scraping the sky.
My thoughts prowl like squirrels
eyeing the russet and beige piles.
Trying to set my mind at ease –
this hygge, this rest
everyone says to seek
is not easy.
Troubles dangle in my dreams
and what little sleep there is rings
with lists and things forgotten,
things left to do.
I’m waiting for frost, for snow
to drape this land, my heart.
Let the cold winds gorge
on all the rottenness, burden the air
with our failures, our longings –
all the things we finally have to let go.
Closer Than It Appears
Isle of Harris, Scotland
Winding around the coast,
we watch sea and hills unfurl –
emerge then vanish without notice –
pockets of blue and green
winking with the sun.
How is it December
and the holidays so close
when the Gulf Stream flows
with warm breezes
that feel like Spring?
Our hearts wild
and flesh aching,
we long to give, to get
reassurances of love, of belonging.
Thoughts more like roaring waves
than silky fields, we wound
with words, slay with stares.
This trip around the island exposes
ridge and rock, sun slanting
the surfaces, bright here, shaded there.
Desolation becomes beauty.
What is beyond, only the light
can reveal.
we watch sea and hills unfurl –
emerge then vanish without notice –
pockets of blue and green
winking with the sun.
How is it December
and the holidays so close
when the Gulf Stream flows
with warm breezes
that feel like Spring?
Our hearts wild
and flesh aching,
we long to give, to get
reassurances of love, of belonging.
Thoughts more like roaring waves
than silky fields, we wound
with words, slay with stares.
This trip around the island exposes
ridge and rock, sun slanting
the surfaces, bright here, shaded there.
Desolation becomes beauty.
What is beyond, only the light
can reveal.
