Mulberries

by Emily Paige Ballou

We once found an enormous old tree
in the park by the river, at a church picnic,
after the rain ended.
The berries like fat violet caterpillars
were rare, coveted and expensive
in another country far away
where she used to live, Morocco, Sarah told us.
So delicate you almost couldn't pick them at all.
They broke as they fell to the ground,
as we jumped to shake the branches
above our little heads, staining indelibly
my white Keds with purple kisses,
to my mother's groans.
We collected them all afternoon in paper cups,
rinsed them under a rusty public drinking fountain.
Let each fragile jewel burst
into soft dark amethyst liquor in our mouths.
Rich and favored we felt, with hair unbrushed,
magenta tongues and ruined tennis shoes,
like princesses of Solomon.

Copyright © Emily Paige Ballou 2005

Dancing in Theory

by Emily Paige Ballou

Yes, she likes dancing
                                 in theory
when her brain doesn't
have to balance a formula,
to solve an equation for
grace.

When the ether supports her
joints' wishful orbits
as she discovers how to fall
with a feather's reverent acceleration
not a
                                 penny's,
how to bloom like cream through
bitter coffee. It seems in
contemplation the unforgiving
city's wooden floors
should rather meet
                                 the soles
of her feet with the pressure of
warm lips and cheeks.

Amazed by the back-flipping black
children of Beale Street,
                                 mysteriously,
by their effortless soft revelation
of revolution,

she covets the earth's confident
embrace of their spinning bodies.

Copyright © Emily Paige Ballou 2005

Eriol

by Emily Paige Ballou

And I will seek
no brightness, beyond
the gold-crimson clouds
of twilight, a star on the water,
candles left in frosted windows

Will not raise my voice to
call you to me, or
cry after the inevitable, lost
stories we'll tell our children.

For I was never
made for you, and can only
vow to sail back this way
again, some brighter evening.

So I will dream alone,
and live always
in shadows of winter streets,
tales told by firelight

Copyright © Emily Paige Ballou 2004

French Toast Song

by Emily Paige Ballou

It's only already 11:57
and I pray for stormclouds
in the morning to clear these futile
whispers from my empty bed.

So body throbbing, tangled hair
I falter through Kate's midnight hallway,
to cubist Christmas lights
and doves that sing all night

To begin a ritual of echoes
ageless as murmuring May
coming-of-summer evening wind
twined with a faintly left behind song.

My nighttime kitchen smells
like cheap vanilla and
falls another shade darker
as the sky cracks tenderly

And falls to my balcony
two creamy eggs, broken
on the edge of a bowl,
a splash and a half of milk

Twirl each other hesitantly.
Some recipes become dances,
recalling themselves as grace
begins to fall in chanting steps.

Butter melts so quietly,
losing itself in golden velvet
pools of surrender. I drown
a slice of stale sourdough bread

And hear it sizzle in
acquiescent ecstasy, alongside
an early-morning lullaby
mingling with the rain.

I'll always burn my tongue
on the first bite. There
are things even I can't teach myself
and tonight, it's only already too late.

Copyright © Emily Paige Ballou 2004

Lingering

by Emily Paige Ballou

While it is still autumn
I leave my bedroom window open
and light a flowered candle there
on the ashen sill for you

with my cheek resting
in my hand, elbow propped
on worn feather pillows
and gray cat curled over bare feet

I stain my fingers, then
my lips with the candle's fragile
fragrant breath of soot, and
scribble half-hopeless postcards

by the tremulous glow
dancing on the window screen,
the belly of the black pearl moon
bright with the fullness of time

until the gentlest
who-who, who-who
brings me to another dim
October morning

or comes knocking at my kitchen door—
who-who, who-who?

Copyright © Emily Paige Ballou 2004

The Water Oak

by Emily Paige Ballou

She
begins to die
from the inside out
and burns so gently in
her dark heart, so softly ravaged
defenseless from her own perishing essence,
resilient, stubbornly
surrendering an old axe wound to glowing green sap,
decades toughened wooden skin, contains a singing silent hollow
bleeding sweetly amber and broken xylem

'til all her strength of
yearly troubles, stories entombed, dead
secrets forsaken
are dust
and she persists,
entirely
resonant
and

delicate.

Copyright © Emily Paige Ballou 2004