Middle Archaic Spear Point

Middle Archaic Spear Point

As for what you look like

now that distance and the years

can calculate the damage...

I fell in love with the man who wrote the poetry

I see him by the ocean in the moonlight

and at his family's graves

I see him in the high pasture of his home

wading in the creek

Fragrance of his mother's roses

drifting...

in his father's laughter

As his brother sleeps-in

– forever

I see you drinking coffee

little Bobo, on your lap

stars reflect

chihuahua-huge

Devotion

in his limpid, darling eyes

I see you, sullen one

whom I would have followed

just to know you...

curious

in some foreign forest

so far south of my accent

lost in time and purpose there in Georgia

and what were you thinking

while waiting for your son?

And what else?

Only God could know the rest....I see you in the moon that pulls the tides

across the ages

till our eyes meet in your words – a piercing

so unexpected

Elizabeth Balise

Liz Balise is a long-time resident of Scranton, Pennsylvania who grew up in Springfield, Massachusetts. Most of her working life has been devoted to human services and to teaching English in public schools. Poetry entered her life as a teenager, but real love for it was fostered by her relationship with her Marywood College mentor, Barbara Hoffman. A solitary writer when not in front of a classroom, she filled journals and canvas bags with scraps of life, thinking always, “They must mean something?” Poems, short stories, and articles have appeared in ergo magazine of the old Prufrock’s Cafe in Scranton. Online work has been published in SWITCH 2017 and also in Mothers Aways Write, October 2019. She was a featured poet for the United States and Canada in The Blue Nib, September 2019.