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When the scent of wild strawberries wafts from the woods
and returns the juicy-sweet meadows of childhood,
when the double pleasure of present and past throws me
this heady bouquet
on a day already fully flowered with gifts,
I praise.
While on the cedar boardwalk through the mangrove forest,
when glossy green leaves reach out,
when tangled and twisted prop roots snare imagination's
strange wildness and warblers, unseen, call out in song,
I praise.
And when at last the calm pond of the Gulf stretches
blue beyond the horizon and sews itself seamlessly to the sky,
when it lifts the edge of its white-skirted flounce to the sand,
what can I do but praise
and praise again
as thousands of filmy wings flit backward, forward, hover
their last hurrahs, their last two weeks in the air
after a lifetime of water—
these dragonflies, damsels, their new resplendence
mating, creating—Oh joyous affirmation of life--
Praise and praise and praise.
From Still (FutureCycle Press, 2018).
Used here with permission.
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Mary Jo Balistreri was a concert pianist for most of her life, but in 2005 she began writing poetry after the death of her seven-year-old grandson. Poetry gradually helped her transform her grief into something resembling acceptance. Mary Jo’s award-winning work is widely published and she is the author of four collections: Still, gathering the harvest, Best Brothers, and Joy in the Morning. In 2014, Mary Jo began writing haiku and haibun and, since then, has turned almost entirely to Japanese forms. Mary Jo lives in Wisconsin; learn more about her at http://maryjobalistreripoet.com/.
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