~ ONE ART’s Top 10 Most-Read Poets of December 2023 ~
Poem for My Daughter
The past is a country of windows.
In some of them, faces, their histories
sealed by glass. In others,
white curtains. Shadows without name.
Better to create your own history
out of longing and desire
than to mourn the loss of unknown
faces in the photographs your father left
to you. Better to take loss as part of
memory, that long wind blowing past you
with what’s retrievable, or not.
Remember all the times it snowed so hard
the apple tree would vanish
from your window? Yet it was there.
So with my love. His death. His love.
Keep sight of what’s essential.
How, even in the worst storms,
green and blossom travel from the roots.
*
Shifting
A friend says not to focus on the negative
all the time. Open your eyes to the good,
she tells me on the phone, when my husband
calls out that there’s a dead rabbit
under the deck, having lifted boards
to find out why the sliding glass doors
on the patio won’t close—not because
of the dead rabbit, whose good-luck foot
lies there, all that’s left besides the rib cage
with its beautiful architecture, the fine spine.
A joist has settled, or the piling under it,
evidence that things are always shifting,
nothing is static, not even grief or love.
Nothing’s static but death, my friend says when
I call back with news of the rabbit. At least
once all the decomposing stops. I think of all
the words I’ve written, or spoken, or thought.
Even the saved ones are shifting: a blessing
is not what it was when I was a kid and it came
directly from God. Now it can come from rain,
or the wind, or a child’s sigh as she sleeps.
*
Letter I Should Have Written Years Ago
Neither of you has any idea of the pain ahead.
She’s almost seven, and earlier she cried
because you pulled her front loose tooth,
only your big hand got the other one,
too, the one that wasn’t even loose.
She had to change her shirt for the photo,
it was so bloody. But she’s smiling now,
happy she can sing the song, get a double
visit from the tooth fairy. You’re looking down,
contrite, maybe, or just trying not to laugh.
I’ve never stopped loving her, but when I saw
this old photo, I remembered how I loved you
then, loved your strong, star-athlete body,
the way it wanted me. Before the pain
of seeing how unsuited we were for each other.
I don’t remember when it first began, the falling
out, but no hint of it here. Summer, your skin
beautifully tanned, warm light even inside
the house before those long dark winters.
Forgive me for forgetting who we were then.
*
Lynne Knight has published six full-length poetry collections and six chapbooks. Although she lived in the United States for most of her life, she now lives on Vancouver Island.
Enough
The Japanese meadowsweet fades.
The grass brittles, the rain stays east
or north or south. The heron at the edge
of the strait just at dawn took off as I neared,
swooped low toward the end of the sand spit.
A friend says enough with herons in poems,
especially blue herons, because come on,
there are other birds if you must have birds.
On the way back, I hear a Swainson’s thrush,
the first notes the same as those my mother
would whistle to call me home. Maybe
enough with my mother, too. But oh, hearing
that call, how the heart comes running—
*
Silent Pianos
I remember thinking Oh please,
stop going on about it, whenever
my grandmother mentioned
her arthritis, lamenting no longer
being able to play the piano,
her fingers so bent & crippled.
She’d had to forsake her rings,
she’d say again until I longed
to get up, lift the lid & pound
the repetition away. My mother
glared, so I stayed in my chair,
bored, twenty. After a while
my mother would sigh Where
does the time go, & while I drove her
home she’d say the one who could
really play the piano was Mame,
her grandmother, & then
her fingers would run the air
as she played a tune from
childhood, & me not even born.
*
Memoir
Late in life, her first lover began to send her
chapters from a book he was writing on his travels
with his wife, recently dead, & each chapter alluded
to their making love, which he sometimes called
a “cuddle,” sometimes “noodling,” & sometimes
the hooting cry of a strange bird they’d seen in Egypt,
so she felt pangs of jealousy, or regret, she could never
be sure, but of course she said nothing of this to him,
even to herself, really, writing instead how the wife
had been so much bolder, so much more adventurous,
so much better suited to him than she would have been.
She believed this. But the pang was there like the sound
of love cries in another room in a hotel where you lie
sleepless, trying not to think of all you’re missing.
*
Lynne Knight has published six full-length poetry collections and six chapbooks. Her poems have been widely published in journals such as Poetry and The Southern Review; her awards include a Poetry Society of America Award, a RATTLE Poetry Prize, and a National Endowment of the Arts fellowship. Although she lived in the United States for most of her life, she now lives on Vancouver Island.
Condensed History, with Silver Pin
He bought the tickets—he worked
in the city then. I was home for winter
break. I hadn’t seen him since September.
He was saving money to go to Europe
for a year. I was still a senior. In love
with someone else, I’d written to him
weeks before. He read the letter
in the lunchroom at work. But there
were the tickets, the plan. So we went
to the Garden, cheered for Michigan
(we lost). He left for Europe weeks later.
I married. He sent a silver pin
from Greece by way of congratulation.
Two decades later, two marriages each,
we found our way back to each other.
Doubts, still, but after many years,
marriage. I hardly ever wear the silver pin.
I’m afraid to lose it, it’s so delicate.
*
Lynne Knight is the author of six full-length poetry collections and six chapbooks. Her work has appeared many journals, including Poetry and The Southern Review. She lives on Vancouver Island.
