June 1, 2017

Barry Ballard

COMPLICATIONS AT BIRTH

She was as timid as a blue heron’s
shadow standing at the edge of silent
waters, looking out over its sickened
mirror of emptiness. And the offense
of her child’s deformity left us shattered
to tears, where her trembling hand kept reaching
for answers in mine (as if this backward
stare could close and keep her mind from weakening).

And, in that moment, her best ideas
of “love” and “motherhood” were already
deteriorating, splitting like the sun-dried
timber we leaned against, opening her
pain to scenes that should have flown away, thoughts
afraid to be there in the smear of open sky.

from Rattle #19, Summer 2003

__________

Barry Ballard: “Like everyone, I reach for answers in someone else’s hand. My poetry is an expression of that reaching—maybe for God, maybe for my own identity, maybe for something that can stop the speeding confusion and reclaim that wonderful thing called meaning. And sometimes it goes even deeper—when someone reaches for me.”

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July 7, 2016

Barry Ballard

FOOTSTEPS (OLD AND NEW)

When you walk through blizzards or a sandstorm
Your footprints will disappear as soon as you
Step out of them. There’s no way to review
The places you’ve been. The meanings get worn
Away so quickly that everything sworn
As a truth is seen as a lie. You do
Your best to brace yourself, but life this new
Hasn’t washed the blood from just being born.

That’s how they see your choice to start again.
It goes through the birth-pangs of a divorce
With people in the room that don’t belong.
There’s blood about everything. Someone tends
To covering up the past. And you’re forced
To save it, before every footstep’s gone.

from Rattle #11, Summer 1999

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November 19, 2012

Barry Ballard

FATE’S PASS

Sleep came not near my couch–while the hours
waned and waned away. I struggled to reason off
the nervousness which had dominion over me.
–Edgar Allan Poe,
Fall of the House of Usher

Poe taught me that the mind is bricked up like
a muffled voice illuminated
by a single flickering light, almost dead
and suffocating while clawing without sight
at the lining of its own coffin. He
said that it repeats, repeats, and repeats all
the desperation in the deadfall
of its owner, nailed in the heartbeat

of shadows disturbing his slumber. He said
it always lays us flat on our backs, strapped
to the island of Fate’s darkest dream
etched in the horizon, with Frailty spread
to the sweep (and the sweep) of its breathing pass,
driving us to awareness and its wakened scream.

from Rattle #21, Summer 2004

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