Devon Balwit – Four Poems
Sitting on the wall,
her chest opens to waxwings, to the wind
that sounds her, unstopped.
Holding her own hand, she shuts eyes
on dusk’s peony flush,
her chignon snugging its weight of want
to her nape,
a single strand slipped to ripple alongside
the blown seeds lazing ever farther
as they sink. She watches one till it disappears
between blades,
then stands, her hands falling to her hips,
her hips falling
into the rhythm of steps. Somewhere, an ear
returns her echo.
creation myth
the crow constructs
the man, pebble
by pebble, ear, a wild
thistle rustling,
pupil, a solitary seed,
progenitor
of forests, each plume
a lock of hair
ready to lift in wind.
how the blessed travel
the tiniest finch
is enough
to bear away
a saint
if the saint herself
is tiny
and clings close
to the beating wings
look
there they go
with a sound
like a piccolo
shedding light
like midsummer
blushing the skin
of a pear
perfect
on the sill
gloss
spread your calligraphy
over night,
antennae alert to the
disambiguation
of stars, your scaled wings
proof
that even cocooned,
oblivious,
from cell
to wingtip,
one can change.
offer each ornament
as a key
to a universal geometry,
neither the filled staves
of the maestros,
nor a naked man
on a cross
weightier signs
of an unsoundable
imagination.
Author’s Statement on Beauty
Beauty comes to me, first and foremost, through my eyes. The natural world serves as my most consistent doorway to it–whether through a mackerel sky at sunset, the geometry of garden flowers, striations in stones, the hover of raptors, the myriad shapes of insects, the wind swirling grass, or light playing on water. I’m awed by fractals and iridescence. The printed page offers a different type of loveliness, one of word choice, economy of expression, alliteration and internal rhyme. I notice the way poems sit on the page, the font they are set in, and the images that accompany them. The effect of beauty is to let one stand outside of time, which, ironically, is exactly what the process of creating a poem does.
Devon Balwit is a poet and educator from Portland, Oregon. She has a chapbook, Forms Most Marvelous, forthcoming from dancing girl press (summer 2017). Her poems can be found in journals such as: The Cincinnati Review, Red Paint Hill, The Ekphrastic Review, and Permafrost.