Résistance

Annette Sisson

A red balloon wafts
over a paddock of horses
near Haworth. It lifts
on bursts of air that reverse,
push it groundward.
It ascends again, larks
above the animals’ heads
like a gamboling kelpie.
Only one mare,
blue-black, is bewitched,
looks up, inquires.
The balloon swoops. The mare
bolts, snorts, hooves
the air, electrified. The orb
rises again,
cascades again, charming
her, luring her in.
It darts too close,
she dips, tearing and bucking,
and the scene loops, as if
the players have forgotten the cue
to unlock the script’s sequence.
A stalemate of horse and balloon,
of fear and curiosity. This
palpitating tension, this résistance.

***
Or the inverse:
How branching
Saplings in a perfect
bio-sphere collapse under
their own weight seven
years hence. Regardless
of variety. Over
and over. No wind.
Nothing to
withstand.

Like oblivious
mares pulling
up grass,
gnawing lemony
clover. Like
a sheltered tree
hobbled, sapped
of strength. Like
a life hollowed
by hope, too
fallow to seed
fear, to paw
at ghosts, to bear wind,
to resist.

---

Annette Sisson is Professor of English at Belmont U in Nashville, TN. She enjoys traveling, hiking, singing, supporting theater, watching birds (as opposed to bird-watching), baking, playing the piano, reading, and (of course) writing. Recent awards: Fellow, 2020 BOAAT Writer’s Retreat; winner, The Porch Writers’ Collective’s 2019 Poetry Contest; Hon. Mention, Passager’s 2019 Poetry Contest. Poem publications include: Zone 3, Rockvale Review (“Best of the Net” nom.), Nashville Review, Passager, Typishly, One, Hamilton Stone Review, KAIROS, The Ekphrastic Review, and Underwood. Her chapbook is titled: A Casting Off, (Finishing Line, May 2019). Poems forthcoming in The Blue Mountain Review, KAIROS, SPANK the CARP, and Raleigh Review.