Donald Levering
On Balance
On one scale Anubis places a blue whale’s newly stilled heart
on the other a fledgling tanager’s falling feather
The chief torturer in the garden gestures
A butterfly lights on his elbow
Muddy water in the hole for the new skyscraper
A decade later the kestrel’s nest on the sill at the 64th floor
Mid-air mating of hummingbirds above
a humvee idling in a superstore lot
Cookfire water in a bucket hauled from the well
Chlorine fumes wafting from a swimming pool
A million children with matchstick limbs
Mass production of oversized pants
Prayer flags flapping
in a refugee camp
Donald Levering's 12th poetry book, The Water Leveling With Us, was published in 2014 by Red Mountain Press. Donald is a past NEA Fellow in Poetry and was a Runner-Up for the Georgetown Review Award and Janet B. McCabe Award Finalist in 2013. He has been a Duende Series Reader and was a Guest Poet in the Academy of American Poets online Forum. More information is available at donaldlevering.com.