KB Ballentine
KB Ballentine’s seventh collection, Edge of the Echo, will launch May of 2021 with Iris Press. Her earlier books can be found with Blue Light Press, Middle Creek Publishing, and Celtic Cat Publishing. Published in Crab Orchard Review and Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, among others, her work also appears in anthologies including In Plein Air (2017) and Carrying the Branch: Poets in Search of Peace (2017). Learn more at http://www.kbballentine.com.
The Spirit of Wild
To sing in the dark
is to know there is light
like a fox shrugging the flame in its fur
the rush of the creek after a summer storm
the whisper of wings as an owl haunts by
a nest of bones where daffodils peek
sap surging upwards to green and then leaf
branches that creak through the wind’s endless sigh
though shadows may shift and re-shape their forms
let the wedge of the moon act as a lure
cast off the rooms where we’ve boxed ourselves tight
step into the den of the forest’s deep heart
Green Persistence
Light leaps from the Pink Moon
this early April morning.
You in my mind again.
Spring a puzzle in blossom and chaos –
brief chill, haunting warmth.
Cherry, redbud, dogwood feather the woods,
yards still gripped by shadows.
Filaments of green nudge the soil,
lift leafing heads to the sun.
Brown thrashers, orioles chitter
near thickets littered with nest-building,
a squirrel basking on the porch railing.
Even the air breathes beginnings –
but I’m stuck, struck still
as the past collapses
inside me.
The moon blinks and fades,
a blank canvas bluing the day.
Sheila-Na-Gig online 