Turn, Turn, Turn Again
as wind whispers your name.
Summer’s breaking down and a starker calling comes –
leaves saturated with sunset before surrendering.
Turn as a gray owl brushes past,
baring branches groaning in midnight’s wind.
Turn, turn as sun and moon caress then shuffle-
dance and trade who gets to stay, Venus brooding
in the darkness. Turn again –
this year disappearing with your parents,
with friends entering a new year without
days or hours, and time swells
like the almond tree in spring – surging
with perfume, with love, with yes.
KB Ballentine’s latest collection All the Way Through is forthcoming in November 2024 from Sheila-Na-Gig Inc. Current books can be found with Blue Light Press, Iris Press, Middle Creek Publishing, and Celtic Cat Publishing. Learn more at www.kbballentine.com.
Yellow, Orange, Red
(Winter Solstice 2022)
The sun raises his face again.
Streaks daub the sky –
yellow, orange, red,
brightness bleeding through places
heaven’s worn thin,
to illuminate the space
where yesterday flows into today,
today switches locus with tomorrow,
and there is only now.
Lucency traverses
the sage uncertainty of darkness
to rise, triumph restored,
and begin again.
A thin, bright frontier of hope
we hope to cross
year following year.
J.S.Watts is a novelist and poet. She has published nine books: five of poetry, “Cats and Other Myths”, “Years Ago You Coloured Me”, “Songs of Steelyard Sue”, “The Submerged Sea” and “Underword”, plus four novels. www.jswatts.co.uk
This Year
[due to curly crisps, brandy nips
and other consolations
using waist-makers hip-shakers
a non-slip brick & organic strap]
I will
clean fluff off the dimpled mat sigh
at my bag-a-slug leggings – and
practice yoga every day I will
rise at 6 when it’s minus 4
huddle down to cold plank floor –
and practice yoga every day I will
low lunge cow pose shake to the
smack of side angled plank I
imagine
I’ll practice nearly every day.
Terry Dyson is a poet working and living in Devon.