Balance (Moonstone Arts Press 2025) by Laurie Kuntz
Comments by Editor Sharon Waller Knutson
Wise and skillfully crafted is the best way to describe Laurie Kuntz’s new poetry collection, Balance, in which she opens up her life to us and gives us insight into how to balance marriage, motherhood and aging and learn how to live with the curve balls life throws us.
I think the life lessons she teaches us are best summed up in the last stanza of the title poem,
Balance:
We need that balance
to embrace an endless summer state of mind
while dancing in the eye of a storm.
This is how Laurie Kuntz describes the book:
“Balance contains poems about my expatriate existence, cross-cultural experiences, and assimilating back into my own American culture as an aging woman, parent, and partner to the person with whom I share my adult life. Balance is a collection of poems, which reflects upon finding a place of safety and acceptance while grappling with societal and personal issues of dissension, alienation, and assimilating into one's personal strength and identity.”
Praise from the Poet’s Peers:
Laurie Kuntz’s Balance is filled with rare insights into interstitial moments, those in-between times when love is neither new nor exhausted, when we are aware of our lives as works in progress, moving toward an unknowable future. Kuntz tells us, “We know we live on a brink, / brink of storm, brink of heartache, brink of all that breaks.” It takes courage for a poet to explore that brink, to live in it, and to allow us to live there with her, in a place without posturing, guarantees, or false promises, but if there is value to our lives, it comes from noticing the flashes of meaning we can find there, such as “A screen door held open or gently shut / after shared cups of chamomile tea on a rainy day.” As Kuntz reminds us, “Between the landing and next jump / are the daily interactions that prove us human.”
– George Franklin, author of A Man Made of Stories.
"There is much wisdom in this book. The voice that holds these poems together is one of experience, insights, and empathy. Laurie Kuntz writes beautifully and truthfully, and in her we trust. Balance contains the still point that we need to get us through these tumultuous times."
– Bunkong Tuon, author of Koan Khmer and What Is Left
“In this deeply moving collection of 25 poems, the quiet rhythms of marriage, the slow arc of aging, and the ache of grief are brought into focus. The verses in Balance are simultaneously tender and unflinching. They explore moments in life that place one squarely on a fulcrum, striving for balance and perspective. The world and its continual wars also bring a personal and collective need for reckoning. One leaves the pages of this book with “an astonished and renewed light” (“Solstice), and a new respect for Laurie Kuntz’s resonant poetic voice.
– Judy Ireland, poet & author of Cement Shoes (2013)
Some of my favorite poems:
Options
In the beginning,
we had time to tally
who spited, who hurt,
who forgave first.
We could nurse our anger
for weeks turning it into a game,
until one of us cried "Uncle."
We bullied time thinking
it would never fight back,
but now time wins and winds
around us with an aging wisdom.
It hardly matters who dirtied
the new white towels,
forgot to turn off the lights,
lock the back gate,
ate the last poppy seed muffin,
broke the porcelain coffee mug,
or refused to kill the spider.
One of us will always be left
hungry, in the dark, afraid
of things that crawl into open entryways.
In our waning days together,
we can no longer waste
the time that stretches between us.
Our history is branded by the flames we create.
We can choose to stay in the pan, or jump into the fire.
While My Husband Forgets Our Anniversary
He is making tomato sauce on a rainy Sunday
he grows tomatoes , good for the prostate,
which I do not have, but I like his tomato sauce, nonetheless.
I offer to help him cut the soft overripe batch of ruby Comparis,
my hand nervous on the knife, after all he is oblivious
to this day, 55 years ago that we met, 37 wedded legal ones,
somewhere I have the paper to prove it.
Later, he calls me back into the kitchen, asks me to taste--
questions the flavor, the saltiness.
Perhaps a dab of sugar is needed.
Don't burn your tongue he says, as I lift
the spoon to my lips, and tell him it is perfect.
Long Division
In the framed photo
that sits on a dusty sill,
the two of us draped
in a landscape of wildflowers,
flowers only you could name:
larkspur, foxglove, yarrow.
We were envied
for our spirit and the grace
in which we walked, talked, and loved.
You believed in the overall
goodness of every gesture,
I fixated on details,
dissecting all we shared:
larkspur, foxglove, yarrow.
I was the worst of us,
You had the more genuine smile,
the thicker hair, the thinner frame,
the floating gait, the accepting heart.
This kind of love between opposites
can only remain intact
when put in a gilded frame:
larkspur, foxglove, yarrow.
We parted in summer,
when the lavender bushes were in full scent.
Now, approaching another bloom
you come back to me, but only in this photo
where we walk those blooming paths:
larkspur, foxglove, yarrow.
Once, in an uninterrupted dream,
I saw you in a crowded bar--
a place you would never enter...
far from rural hideouts.
(continued with stanza break)
You were surrounded by friends,
the kind I have now that you are gone
they loved you, not me.
In this dream, you were the best of us.
I am foolish to ignore the years falling
like rusty coins from a frayed pocket.
When I stare at the photo,
engraving your weak smile into memory,
I still try to do the math of forgiveness,
but you are bent on long division.
Sister, sharer of secrets, maker of plans
until the plans never ripened
Unlike, larkspur, foxglove, yarrow.
Between
If our lives were lived in a straight line
like holding ends of a jump rope--
one turner madness, the other magic,
we would learn to rise in rhythm
with each arc of the rope and all that happens
in a moment of becoming airborne.
Between the landing and next jump
are the daily interactions that prove us human:
The nod of passing hikers scaling an uphill trail.
The placing of coins in a palm by the shopkeeper
after asking how your elderly mother is doing.
A screen door held open or gently shut
after shared cups of chamomile tea on a rainy day.
The manicurist who shapes your nails into a spring color palette.
A pitanga bush overhanging the bridge
never failing to drop its red dappled berries into the lap of April.
Each handshake, hug, and embrace
is a life in the telling, stories that will end
in a skip, jump, and final landing
between madness and magic.
Balance
I could write endlessly
about all things foreboding--
hurricanes and turbulence
more likely due to warmer air
that carries us to a season
we hope to thrive in.
From June's blossoms come
a life in harvest,
dark soil blankets the roots
of all that green:
a pasture, cross haired vines,
meadows abundant with wild petals
upon petals, every bloom opens
to summer's endless embrace,
and we live as if nothing will ever end.
But, an end always comes,
hurricanes and turbulence takeover
a country's spirit, a body's betrayal,
an erosion of simple kindness.
Yet, somewhere a child
is learning to ride a wave,
someone's mother is picking lilacs and lavender,
a father holds the seat of a two wheel bike
promising not to let go.
We need that balance
to embrace an endless summer state of mind
while dancing in the eye of a storm.
