Two Poems by Joan Colby

Puffballs

 

As if the moon lay halved

In hemispheres at the edge

Of our woodlot. Nestled beneath

A twisted oak, its mossy side

A Polaris of the forest.

It’s afternoon and the grass is still

Rinsed with dew, wild strawberries poking

Red bonnets once again, though it’s October.

Though the fallen cherry leaves are dry and

Bundled as papooses.

This is the route the dog and I take

Daily. The three redtails who abide

In the back pasture don’t like intrusions.

Soaring and dipping like frowning icons.

How we imagine ownership: as if looking

Confers authority. As if digging

Postholes and stringing webs

Of wire could keep out anything

Determined to arrive.

Concepts of what is whose go winging.

The puffballs glimmer in the failing light

Like moons fallen

Into a meadow of red stars.

Puffballs II 

You’d think the frost would silver them

As it does the timothy. Instead, they’ve browned

Like muffins. Leathery

As old Frye boots. Such forlorn moons

Undazzled by a star’s reflection.

You’d never see them now, huddled

In grizzled underbrush unless you knew

Where to look. O, they were lovely

And haunting just days ago

Before the cold hands of the winds

Caressed them into a sober destiny.

The varnish of tawny fate renders them

Inedible as pigskin. Too late to harvest

And fry in butter. Moons whose shine

Is lost. The color of warm beer.

We stumble up the incline

To the final barrier of box elders

Waving riddled arms on the eve

Of all hallows.






Seven books published including The Lonely Hearts Killers, The Atrocity Book, etc. Over 980 poems in publications including Poetry, Atlanta Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, The New York Quarterly, South Dakota Review, Epoch, etc. Two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards (one in 2008) and an IAC Literary Fellowship. Honorable mention in the 2008 James Hearst Poetry Contest—North American Review and the 2009 Editor’s Choice Contest--Margie, and finalist in the 2007 GSU (now New South) Poetry Contest, 2009 Nimrod International Pablo Neruda Prize, 2010 James Hearst Poetry Contest and Ernest J. Poetry Prize Joan Colby lives on a small horse farm in Northern Illinois with her husband and assorted animals.