JANNA KNITTEL
★ ★ ★ ★
POETRY
Image by Anne Nygard
First Anniversary
How should we mark
the 365 days
of this new phase?
No rituals feel
fitting to our
peculiar love.
I will light a candle,
bake kolaches,
while you look
over my shoulder.
I can walk
in the woods,
wear the belt
you gave me,
your knife,
talk to your ashes.
Tell me how to mark
this long year
since you left
on what you called,
the next adventure.
Thin Places
Heaven and earth overlap.
You stand on an invisible bridge
between two worlds
loosely stitched.
You know it in a breath
when ordinary stones
in Scotland sweep
more magic through you
than Stonehenge. Or years drag
before you know
you touched the hem
of heaven.
After his triple bypass
I asked my father to visit
the wild bird refuge
where we walked between
moss-dressed trees,
where I held my breath,
where I photographed
him kneeling
beneath a curved-out
branch, after which
he lived 26 years
longer.
Willamette Highway
We swapped fields of summer crops
and rain for high desert,
Crescent Lake.
Mom and Dad walked the beach
as we three swam.
Pumice shoreline, ponderosa.
Sometimes we rowed
to the island
where we roamed prehistory.
One day ablaze,
on our way home
we jumped
into the river,
so cold we traded
skin for scales.
Janna Knittel lives in Minnesota but still calls the Pacific Northwest “home.” Janna has published a chapbook, Fish & Wild Life (Finishing Line Press, 2018) and has poems published or forthcoming in Between These Shores Literary and Arts Annual, Blueline, Cottonwood, Up North Lit, North Dakota Quarterly, Split Rock Review, Cold Mountain Review, Whale Road Review, and Waters Deep: A Great Lakes Anthology. Recognition includes 2021 and 2019 grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board.
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First Anniversary : poignant poem about grief, just enough to say it all.
Yes. It subtly and suddenly is there.