Poetry by KB Ballentine

KB Ballentine, winner of Poetry Society of Tennessee’s 2025 Best of the Fest and Writer’s Digest November 2024 PAD Chapbook Challenge, has nine collections of poetry, the most recent All the Way Through (Shelia-Na-Gig 2024). Her work also appears in numerous anthologies including: Women Speak: Volume Ten, Writing the Land: Wanderings II, Art of Chestnut Review: Volume One, and The Strategic Poet. Learn more at kbballentine.com.

Note for the Hurried World

Remember pine and spruce

   aroma sighing through fresh fog

and dew, the weathered wood

   that was once alive—maybe

even more so now that it wraps

   the inside of your house.

Remember these leaves, cracked

   and withered now, were once

green, once hummed with blossoms

   and bees—pulsing

with butterfly and dragonfly wings.

Remember the river, how she’s full

   then empty then full again. How she

flows downstream, current cresting –

   waterfalls licking rocks and kissing

the banks. Even in deepest trouble

   she flows on.

Remember we are part of this earth—

   the river, the leaves, the wood—even

the sky so wide overhead that the end

   meets its own blue beginning.

Nolichucky

         For Bill Brown

River of Death or River of Dreams?

It’s hard to tell from here, from now –

chicory bluing the fields, sweetgum and hickory

hugging the banks. Bill, who was fond of Jesus,

Buddha, and Ganesh, where are you? I hear you

in the towhee drinking te-e-ea. I see you when the wind

snags maple-tops and flaunts the underside of oaks,

and my muse begins to skip like chimes in a storm.

Thank you for dreaming with us. Thank you

for leaving us with the best parts of you,

back where hearts-a-bustin’ and columbine flare

the shadows, where moss softens fallen trunks.

Maybe one man’s death is a dream

where others wake and find the light.