The Cylburn Touch-Me-Nots, Ned Balbo's sixth book of poems, inhabits
that twilight, "the hour of dark and not-dark," when the rising of the
moon traces the arc of memory, and we ask ourselves, "What else are we
given?" From a crow's orbit and a hawk's descent to desire, love, and
heartbreak, these poems range widely in their search for the sacred,
whether visible to the eye or buried, waiting to be discovered, like all
that "the dark still holds." The trove unearthed includes a sister lost
to the author by adoption, speaking from a parallel life that could have
been his own; an abandoned daughter who, in an earlier decade, dreams of
distant Pluto; and the compass that once belonged to the poet's birth
father, the mute artifact of lost connections. A conspiracy theorist
casts doubt on the moon landing; Saint Joseph grieves at the loss of his
son to the suffering God has planned; and a figure in Bosch's triptych,
despite an afterlife of torment, fondly recalls the earthly delights he
savored.
Through brief lyrics and longer narratives in a variety of forms, we see
that time is "unforgiving/yet not merciless," and that even when we draw
back--like the touch-me-not plants whose leaves withdraw "like seawater
parted by the wind"--our need to touch and to be touched is universal.
