At Saylesville Pond by Mary Jo Balistreri

 Just as we take the train to get to Tarascon or Rouen,

            we take death to reach a star.  Vincent Van Gogh

The poignancy of this spring morning falls

heavy as I replay the doctors words:

This is the last trip she will take.

I sit on the iron bench by the pond—frozen 

with the thought of her dying, living with her absence.

Water splashes over stone. 

An occasional carp gets caught in the sun.

Along the reedy fringes of the marsh, dragonflies

hover over dankness to mate. One darts forward,

then back, spirals down only to be towed upward

by a male, a path difficult to follow.

My eyes rest on the aluminum boat, anchored

to the dock, oars stilled as they lay flat on weathered boards,

quiet seeping into me like medicine.

A glint of orange flits around the milkweed.

A raven’s hoarse scree scratches the air. A breeze

brushes my shoulder, startles me with its breath

and I wonder

if it really does take death to reach a star.

Mary Jo Balistreri has two books of poetry by Bellowing Ark Press, a chapbook by Tiger's Eye Press, and a tiny chapbook their Infinities series.  Poetrystorehouse has made videos and a soundscape for three of her poems. She is widely published, and enjoys getting together with other poets for readings and workshops. Please visit her at maryjobalistreripoet.com.

Interview w/ Poet Mary Jo Balistreri

Who or what inspired you to write poetry?

I had been a concert pianist and harpsichordist for most of my life until in 2005, my youngest grandson died. He was seven and I couldn’t find a way to transcend grief. Music for the first time was not helpful. My daughter, a published writer, suggested writing, and she actually sat with me for encouragement. Why I chose poems is still a mystery, but I did, took a workshop and then began going to classes, etc. In retrospect, poetry provided the container that interpreting music did not.  It also gave me a way to give witness to this child’s life, and to be true to his spirit, of celebration. He loved his life. So I would have to say that the initial spark came from a seven-year-old boy.


Do you have a favorite place to write?

I write longhand at the kitchen table on a yellow legal tablet. I watch birds at the feeders and also on the small lake we live on. They are my inspiration. When I’m in Florida, I write at the beach at an open window with the sound of the surf my background music.


Who are your favorite poets, alive or deceased?

My favorite poets change but ones with staying power are Rilke, W.S. Merwin, Denise Levertov, Elizabeth Bishop, Olaf V. Hauge, Rolf Jacobsen, Tomas Transtromer, and Robert Cording. Recently, I have enjoyed Mary Szybist, Andrea Hollander, and the ghazals of Ghalib.

What five words best sum up your personality?     

enthusiasm, tenacity, spontaneity, determination, and compassion


Other than writing, what do you love to do?

I like reading, gardening, walking, and spending time with art


What are your current and/or next projects?

I am working on a book of personal essays and also putting together a manuscript for a 4th book of poetry.

Two Poems by Mary Jo Balistreri

During the Storm, She Makes Her Way to Ocean’s Edge

The sea raises its voice.

The wind puts its mouth to her ear.

While gulls huddle, waves chew

into stone. 

She mucks through a graveyard for vultures: fish,

jellies, one immense loggerhead, her head bowed

against turbulence. She stomps through smell

of rot, crusted wrack, fragments of shells, seaweed

crushed in the storm’s vortex.

The wind rips away words stuck in her mind,

slick and honeyed slide off the tongue words her boss

used to freeze her pay, slash her job.

The ocean’s clear voice untangles the muddled web

in her mind, unleashes the head-rush of words, 

blows them out to sea.

blows them out to sea.

One Morning in July

A day thick with heat, palmetto palms fan

humidity sweet with coconut and jasmine, the mold

of forest and mudflat. A woman sits on a 20th-story lanai. 

From a hawk’s viewpoint, she surveys a miniature

kingdom of unhurried, deep breaths.  Thoughts morph

as slow as the clouds when a plane

displaces her peace, and a speedboat slices across an

unruffled gulf. Reverie, spliced in mixed emotions, 

recalls yesterday—the osprey and the boy, 

the fish he held up, the bird snatching it.

The woman muses how life and death coil around each other, 

need each other for completion like the surf and its countless

small creatures that thrive and die in its waters, roll

onto shore each day, some shells empty, some full. 

In the apartment next door, a man lies dying. She sips coffee,

watches clouds meringue into fat rabbits, a red-tailed hawk

swoop down from the mangroves and seize a mouse,

and she’s filled with morning’s beauty, filled as well

with its absence. She listens to the sea, its unending cadence,

broken, unbroken.

Mary Jo has two books of poetry, Joy in the Morning and gathering the harvest, both published by Bellowing Ark Press. A chapbook, Best Brothers, published by Tiger’s Eye Press has just been released. She has three Pushcart nominations and two Best of the Net nominations. Mary Jo is also one of three founders of Grace River Poetry, an outreach for schools, women’s shelters and churches. For more information, please visit maryjobalistreripoet.com