In Praise of Bells, Strings, Flute, Sap, and Moss, by Nancy K. Jentsch

Solar Music, by Remedios Varo (Mexico, b. Spain) 1955

In Praise of Bells, Strings, Flute, Sap, and Moss 

As words and their feckless 
Tower of Babel fall to doom 
moon ascends, chills dew’s 
droplets into Emily’s beryl 
bells that ring ecstatic forest 
fanfares. Sun, focused 
on kissing strings, plays  
day’s lissome minuet. Wind’s 
funneled flute tones 
call even stones to twilight’s 
ballroom while tree sap 
taps its timeless ostinato 
and bark’s moss pillows 
continuo’s counterpoint joust. 

Nancy K. Jentsch

Nancy K. Jentsch’s chapbook Authorized Visitors and the collaborative ekphrastic chapbook Frame and Mount the Sky, in which her poetry appears, were published in 2017. Her collection Between the Rows debuted in 2022. Since beginning to write in 2008, her work has appeared in journals such as Amethyst Review, Panoply, Tiferet Journal, and Zingara Poetry Review. In 2020 she received an Arts Enrichment Grant from the Kentucky Foundation for Women. She has retired after 37 years of teaching and finds a bounty of inspiration in her family and her rural home. More information is available on her website: https://jentsch8.wixsite.com/my-site.