Behind a House

Tara Ballard

there grows a red-faced poppy.
She paints

between two slabs of stone,
petals cupped around an ink-filled heart
like Odette’s

outstretched feathers,
a noon-zephyr of calm
following discontent—
the aftermath

of worship, slight wonder
of haze, where a mother’s pain
meets the weight of God

and the last days
of shiver find a spring
sun, where the laundry hung

on a narrow line
yearns
like the blossom and herb

the earth lifts up
as offering.