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Author: Libby Knight

Forgiveness

Written by Libby Knight. Posted in Poetry.

A patchwork field of weeds
               and memories
mighty oaks resolute as maggots
               writhe
your voice & mine
                  echo in distortions
though puddles only reflect
my face

Thunder claps and dead
                 wood burns
                 lightning strikes and
                 rain sizzles
it’s monsoon season in tornado alley and
           I’m planting saplings with absinthe
                    & moon bearing witness

Seasons wax & wane but
                      I only age
my beauty growing
        in a straight
                     line
these trees have grown & they
        still sing your name

Claytor Lake

Written by Libby Knight. Posted in Poetry.

Slivers of trout break the lake
open, their swift disappearance
like the silence after a question.

It’s quiet. Blessedly so. Steaming
mist skims the water’s surface,
morning light oranges the poplars

and I am thinking about my son,
his breath and his skin’s warmth.
He’s small. Vulnerably so. Acorns

become oaks, fog melts to clarity,
this wide world wakes to sounds:
blue heron yelps, the rasp of grass-

hoppers, a clique of croaking crows,
the plop-plop-plop of smallmouth
bass leaping into the unnamed, and

my child on the porch, his joyous
shrieks of aliveness approaching
something nearing an answer.

Trauma as Dreamer

Written by Libby Knight. Posted in Poetry. 

I dreamt of that man’s
body as a falling animal,
draped in heavy cloth.

       I knew, somewhere,
       that by reaching him I could
       be young, enough to live.

Between us were mountains,
thickets dotted
with lavender and rosehip.

       In the hillside, churches
       carved into earth so that
       even the spires fell

below the tallest grass,
each with ornate windows
drowned in shadow.

       I would call out to him,
       this man of sharp bone, but
       the sound arrived too late,

finding only the air
that held his shape, dropping
away with the sun.

Furnishings

Written by Libby Knight. Posted in Poetry.

Sheepish bloat of a furniture store at night, items
faintly illumined through
the glass displaying the square footage it takes
to suggest arrangements

we can make in our pleasantly enclosed lives.
Starfish of ceiling fans, thrones
of headboards, wooden dining tables holding forth
for flocks of prim parsons chairs.

And this vehicle a vestibule for the body,
a house for aching
bones, a chamber for whatever nimble soul
may be a part of the deal.

In an airy, ancient apartment in Boston
I’ve lain with a girl I knew
I wouldn’t stay with, have seen how much
that silence can say.

The room was lovely, too. Plush king bed, gray
linen comforter, a surplus
of natural light, sensual postmodern canvases,
a sculpture of a tree in the corner.

I am still wandering streetlight-stained highways
while a furnished home beckons,
am still exhuming and examining the past,
listless, listening.