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Jon Ballard
I am a poet and occasional literature instructor for Oakland Community College in Royal Oak, Michigan. Currently I live in Mexico City, Mexico, with my wife and two daughters. My poems have previously appeared in Soundings East, Riverrun, and The Old Red Kimono. My work can be seen in the current issues of SP Quill and The MacGuffin, and is forthcoming in the online journal Poetry Midwest.
When humans forget a field the field
rejoices, seeds itself with buzzing
and distances and wind miscellany.
Here the trees brood kindly over root
rights-of-way and sunlit views,
and which grove or other is responsible
for attracting the wrong kinds of birds.
Grass the County doesn't care to cut
grows to the height of a man's knee,
though such a measure the blades agree
is a shoddy gauge of wildness.
Across the road cultivated pastures offer
sideways glances, unsure at last of the beauty
of plantings or the righteousness of the till,
whereas the yellow-jacketed souls of bees drift
from one field to the next, blessed either way.
