Nelson Ball

CATHERINE VISITS

For Catherine Stevenson

Catherine
likes to visit this place

where I live
mostly in silence

she says
it is peaceful

compared to life
with her students

and her children
here she will

speak words
onto the still air

where
they breathe

and we
look at them



Nelson Ball’s most recent poetry books are In This Thin Rain and Some Mornings (Mansfield Press, 2012 and 2014). An online chapbook of his poems, A Rattle of Spring Frogs, appears on the website of Hamilton Arts & Letters. Chapbooks are forthcoming this year from Apt. 9 Press, Laurel Reed Books and Stone The Crows! Press. Nelson and his late wife and soulmate, artist and writer Barbara Caruso, are the subjects of Nelson Ball & Barbara Caruso / Home Project / A Photo Documentary, a video created by his friend Catherine Stevenson, who is the subject of this poem. The video can be viewed on YouTube.