Devon Balwit, Pulling Toward Home

Pulling Towards Home
Devon Balwit

The east wind sends my poncho swooping
overhead,

startling the dog, already jittery from the rain-streaked
headlights

and the runners, who appear and recede as from another
dimension.

A phalanx of geese wheels above, considering
then rejecting

this small reservoir in its iron palisade,
perhaps sensing

its poured foundation, neither pond scum nor larvae,
slim pickings

for migrants. Winter this year won’t let go, storm
following storm,

sleet punishing crocus. Perhaps, like a protective
parent, the earth

refuses to release us to troubled times, to the bullies
occupying

the commons. Our mother is doing her best to keep us
hibernating

until the threat passes over. Hungrily, the dog
pulls towards home.

Devon Balwit teaches in Portland, OR. She is a poetry editor for Minute Magazine and has six chapbooks and two full-length collections out or forthcoming: We are Procession, Seismograph (Nixes Mate Books) and Motes at Play in the Halls of Light (Kelsay Books). Her individual poems can be found in Cordite, The Cincinnati Review, The Carolina Quarterly, Fifth Wednesday, The Ekphrastic Review, Red Earth Review, The Fourth River, The Free State Review, Rattle, Posit, and more.