The Zingara Project

Tag: KB Ballentine

Grief by KB Ballentine
The doe stares until I turn away –
when I look back, she is gone.
No sound to tell me where,
no movement of the leaves.
Only the wind – breathing.

You left like that.
No gasping, no torturous sobs,
just a closing of your eyes,
and I was alone again.

Now I wander the woods,
hike trails where families laugh.
Where couples with dogs
smile and whistle,
where music pulses with runners,
invade the stillness of this place,
where once we towed
our own kids and dogs.

The dream, the reverie
that comes from silence, I need.
When summer sun sears
through canopies of green,
when heat hazes the path –
a shimmer – where I can see
a hind leg, a hoof – you–
appear in the shadows.

KB Ballentine’s sixth collection, The Light Tears Loose, appeared last summer with Blue Light Press. 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 www.kbballentine.com.
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December 9, 2020
Between Us, the Moon by KB Ballentine
The moon aches, belly full
as dawn frays the edge of night.
In the shallows, a blue heron peers
into the lake, patient as Saint Francis.
But a quick slash of beak, and nature
reveals her unconcern.
Barely awake, the town unshutters,
signs turn in shop windows, blinds open.

And here we lie, in this bed so wide
we don’t have to touch. I can’t remember
the last time I knew you,
when you let me look in your eyes,
lean on you. What happened to us?
The heron unfolds its wings and lifts,
casts a shadow over the shore.
The moon pales, day empty and raw.

~“Between Us, the Moon” first appeared in The Mill, Issue 2.

KB Ballentine has a M.A. in Writing and a M.F.A. in Creative Writing, Poetry. Her fifth collection of poems, Almost Everything, Almost Nothing, is forthcoming by Middle Creek Publishing.
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May 2, 2018
Winter Resignation by KB Ballentine
A shower of snow, ice dust drifting.
Hands so cold they burn, and hot pink memories
of bougainvillea, musk rose burst
into my mind. You, sitting in a grass field, head turned
away from me, the first clue.

Wind picks up, and I tug your old sled
up the track-scabbed hill, lift our son’s small body
onto the graying wood. Watch him laugh and tip
into a pool of space before he, too, speeds away.

—

KB Ballentine’s work has appeared in numerous journals and publications. A finalist for the 2014 Ron Rash Poetry Award, she was also a 2006 finalist for the Joy Harjo Poetry Award and was awarded the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize in 2006 and 2007. Fragments of Light(2009) and Gathering Stones (2008) were published by Celtic Cat Publishing. Her third collection, What Comes of Waiting, won the 2013 Blue Light Press Book Award.
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October 5, 2016
Change of Season by KB Ballentine
Locust tree etches the sky –
lime green pooling into blue.
Bumble bees have begun to lumber
over winter’s parched, crumbling remains.
These are the days when dawn shimmers,
North Star singing away the night.
A robin chirps from the brush line,
and bluebird ripostes, rusty breast swelling.
Dew pearls grass, irises spearing the earth.
Where do we go from here?
A line of spider web shivers in the breeze.
Ants march the porch railings.
I am frozen in yesterday’s words,
morning light on your empty chair.

—

KB Ballentine’s work has appeared in numerous journals and publications. A finalist for the 2014 Ron Rash Poetry Award, she was also a 2006 finalist for the Joy Harjo Poetry Award and was awarded the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize in 2006 and 2007. Fragments of Light(2009) and Gathering Stones (2008) were published by Celtic Cat Publishing. Her third collection, What Comes of Waiting, won the 2013 Blue Light Press Book Award.
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March 9, 2016