SHARON BALLER

Tranquility is His Bride

moment of solitude---
morsel of a microsecond
blessed as an eternity

Tranquility is his bride

if a rose petal 
of thought drifted to his feet
is it a threshold

could he not carry
newly released self through and 
coddle this fledgling 

Tranquility is his bride
this union is unbridled
despite our uncertain world

Tranquility is his bride
his mistress, holy woman,
desert madonna

and he the nomad
whose robes are his home





Simmer Down

This pot bubbles so aromatically
with the love of tender plum tomatoes
gathered garden basil
four cloves of succulent garlic
                  as tender as an ear lobe.
This pot cries for its mother
wishes for redemption
but knows only cold spaces
and promises of steaming pasta.
This pot swallowed the eye-watering resilience
of one organic onion chopped thoroughly
stirred in with half the lyrics of a Simon and Garfunkel song
and the assiduous yearnings for the comforts of home.





First Flight

I was a reluctant passenger----
doubting ascension,
clinging to the fleece of a toy.
My mother sat in the pilot’s seat.
“Are you ready”
with a nod and a thunderous roar
we lifted through the picture clouds.

What was once familiar lay dwarfed below---
the hanger, fields and houses became monopoly pieces
scattered upon the landscape.

Then an endless quilt loosely knit by highways--- 
patches of green, brown 
blue---a rectangle, maybe a swimming pool.
At last just fluffy meringue,
blueberries swathed in cream...
I longed to taste
those cumulus clouds.

She placed my hand on the steering rod
“Are you ready”
My hand was too small---
part of the gameboard world below.
I didn’t move, afraid to share the control,
wanting to give it back to my mother.

Lost in the
vast blue white, I
felt like the only child
that ever flew.
Until that day,
I had thought I could only fly
in my dreams.



			
Traveler

Traveler, bicycle pulled behind him
stopped
returned my call
garage door open behind me as
I  greeted him
ready to begin my ride

the street, an onyx river between us
held our autumn eyes
hazel and brown
as its own

he stood on the walk
the river stagnet between us
to inform me
his ride was done

The last time
we’d been together
it was his gaze that looked through me
as he sat silent in the hospital bed
as mangeled as the red Taurus that had sent him there
swathed in white hospital sheets
he looked at me
so intencely
I thought I’d billow away
my loose cotton shirt
falling off my shoulders
casually

When we met at the tar river
I saw his eyes begin to dull
and regress until
only sockets remained.
Then the boy and the bicycle
were gone.







Ode to Thoreau and the Lady of the Pond

He sat by her side in solitude making daily notes
of ants and other things that passed.
There he captured
her full bodied presence
buried beneath Walden Pond.

The others who passed,
people and ants
passing like
”Sunday in the Park with George,”
could never pull her out.

She would rise in the mist
dry their throats
wet their brows
each fall.

When fall was Indian Summer
her skirts danced with the disarray of
maple and aspen leaves.

When winter came this year,
the old man was gone,
only a memory.
She was his gifted child.
She looked down
‘til the pond mirrored all that was.

The lady of the pond saw all.
Saw all she had seen and refused.
Saw all because her eyes would not close.

When February turned its breathe on her,
the lady could take no more sentimentality.
She could not support the weight of frozen water,
So she cut lines in the snow.
She cut lines in the snow and spelled out her lover’s name
and words for the old man and breathed it all in.
She breathed it all in.
The lady of the pond was breathless---
She  was still ‘cause she’d breathed it all in and then
she forgot to breathe and the sight of that pond
and the words and the snow was too much.

She is the lady.
She is the gifted child.
She feels the snow in her own reflection.
Someone said that she fell
back into her bed beneath the pond.

They said she forgot her strength.
They said the snow stayed all summer.
They said breath never came.
They said the lady of the pond
the gifted child
tried to drown.
I say she’s drowning now.
She’s drowning now and
I heard her once tell Ophelia
Don’t be any man’s fool.
Don’t sing those idiotic songs.
Shakespeare is a hoax.
Stalin is surreal.
I am more than my own reflection.

SHARON BALLER

.