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Ballast

We’re on the banks of Lake Winona
—watching a canoe move, serenely—
when the Frugal Traveler says:

You’re what keeps a canoe steady. 
Ballast. So it doesn’t tip or spin,
if the wind picks up.

Oh? You mean like insensate gravel
or iron or lead in a ship’s hold
or the sand or water that zeppelins

carry to keep them steady?
What can be jettisoned as needed?
A bare load. But funny, that is

what we are for each other
& think how ballast stabilizes
the current of a transformer. 

Think about light, even
a fluorescent, pushing away
darkness, going hum hum—

back to issue

Joan E. Bauer is the author of three full-length poetry collections, Fig Season (Turning Point, 2023), The Camera Artist (Turning Point, 2021), and The Almost Sound of Drowning (Main Street Rag, 2008). Recent work has appeared in Paterson Literary Review, Slipstream and Chiron Review. For some years, she was a teacher and counselor and now divides her time between Venice, CA and Pittsburgh, PA where she co-curates the Hemingway's Summer Poetry Series with Kristofer Collins.