Jo Balistreri ----- Three new poems

Walking with the Wild

As I make my way to ocean’s edge,

the sea raises its voice.

The wind puts its mouth to my ear.

Along the shore, a graveyard market

for vultures: snook, grouper, jack, jellies,

one immense loggerhead.

Gulls skirl, keening part of the salt-

stippled air. Against the jetty,

waves chew into stone.

To walk with the wild is to slough off

the tangle and puff—the week’s gabble

of words, political, honeyed words that slide

off the tongue—to dump the head rush

against groaning buoys, into the slash and slice

of tides. Here where words do not exist,

the mind stretches and swells,

surges with the billowing waves.

Respite

           

In late afternoon, a woman watches time move

through the landscape from her perch in the tree house.

             

A breeze swishes incantations among dappled leaves

            and stalks of goldenrod,

ferries the chit and chatter of squirrels across the pond.

            Songs of cardinals, grosbeaks, and a wood thrush

ring from the nearby woods. Finches at the feeder

            sing the melting color of butter.

In this liquid song, when day’s not quite night,

            when the earth is charged with presence,

the sun rests on treetops. A lone leaf spirals down.

            Blue shadows begin to creep across lawns,

amethyst crowns the tonsured hills in the distance.

            Everything quiets even the barking dog.                   

In this liminality of stretched borders,

in the rousing final movement of the sun’s syzygy

with the moon, something wondrous happens,

and the awe we never lost as children reappears,

elemental, inexhaustible.

Musing in the Tree House

To be where you are

To wait and watch

as a huge oak leaf

dives from the tree’s

highest branch

to a current that ferries it

to another shore  

where snagged

by the screen

the leaf tugs against wire mesh

loosens its tip

wavers

turns sideways

and falls to the sill

where autumn breath gives it wing

among murmuring leaves and 

dappled shadow

Where everything moves

like a Pollack painting

yet

all is silent

Listening