Lit eZine Vol 5 | p-19 | POETRY | Essence – Manic Sylph Writes… Poetry & Thoughts by Mona Soorma

SHORT POEM

ESSENCE
by Barbara E. Hunt

faded party balloons hovering in the air — *Image by* *niekverlaan*

Breath held cannot uncoil from bear-trap 
ribs while steel-caged

mind pins dread in place. How then to hope?
To exhale 

cloying New Year’s expectations hovering 
like faded

party balloons. To expel the mustard-gas 
of an old other year 

laid on weathered bones by saccharine 
birthday-wishes

winking a cheeky, wicked decade’s turn.
To shirk 

weighted-blanket-worries long-flown 
children left 

lingering like latent viruses. To squash 
flat-grey all the air

of day on day, low lit and muffled till 
cotton-wool 

of you is cleansed. Then rising determined
to draw in 

mown-lawn-scent of being alive. 
Absorb like 

chopped-ginger-essence the zing 
of moments 

as easily they’d waft refreshing stale 
palate. Always 

seeking. Then blooming like lavender-thyme, 
patchouli-nutmeg, 

basil-rose aromas in each lungful of living
gulped in 

to cure time’s meticulous and merciless 
march.

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Barbara E. Hunt‘s work has been published extensively across North America, the United Kingdom, Europe, and Australia. Her current works can be found for free on Wattpad, and she has received praise for her book, Devotions, a coloring/poetry book released in 2017. She also won the Calgary Poetry Contest in 2019 and has been featured in the poetry anthology, Worth More Standing, which focuses on trees and was published by Caitlin Press in 2022. She has a new climate-change collection due and entitled Rowing Across the North Atlantic.