Gray skies grimace over the ridge.
October’s ambers and rubies
have fallen, turned to fragments
little boys scuffle through.
The heavens dark by four, I light
lamps around the house, the only hope
in an expanding night. He drives
home through guilty rain.
Skies the shade of slate
on London rooftops
flare with jagged light.
Life was promising
before today when rain
sheeted the green lawns,
smeared the horizon.
Summer was this far gone
last year – hydrangeas fading –
when you met the drunk
in a of shattering asphalt.
KB Ballentine
teaches English and theatre arts to high school and college students when she’s
not writing. She has attended writing academies in both America and Britain. Published
in Bent Pin, MO: Writings from the River,
Apocalypse, Touchstone, and others, she shares her work in various poetry
groups. In 2006 she was a finalist for the Joy Harjo Poetry Award and was
awarded monies from the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Memorial Fund in 2006 and
2007. In February 2008, Celtic Cat Publishing debuted KB’s first
collection of poetry Gathering Stones
and in 2009 released her second collection Fragments
of Light.