Snow-melt from Big Attitash thunders past,
halts my breath until I find balance,
barefoot on the stone. Cold singing in my bones,
feet a perfect shade of pink, I stand on pebbles
in the shallows, sheets of water tumbling
boulder after dimpled boulder, each small pool
pillowing into another.
Farther downstream there may be more
waterfalls, more pools,
but it’s enough to discover a private patch –
families and couples pursuing a perfect photo
pose and a signal that works in this notch
between mountains. People’s calls and shouts recede,
louder now the crows arguing in maples.
Here, a lady-slipper
hides beneath hay-scented ferns, and here
a fledging finch explores the edge of its nest.
Cedars scent the shadows in a forest greenly silent
as Lucy Brook rushes around me –
through me.
KB Ballentine’s seventh collection, Edge of the Echo, is scheduled to 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 www.kbballentine.com.
