Life in Still Greens by Kara Knickerbocker

Picture the honeysuckle wild in January wind:

knots of branches, muscles tensing.

The ash tree holding on to breath

like the last leaf on that young red oak.

It’s like this outside your window:

the footprints in frosted snow or

climbing shelf mushroom steps

to the space where the sky waits to meet us.

Picture life in still greens,

how Norway maples stem from your mouth,

the rough bark of their stories turning

over and over again in the palms of your hands.

---

Kara Knickerbocker is the author of the chapbooks The Shedding Before the Swell (dancing girl press, 2018) and Next to Everything that is Breakable (Finishing Line Press, 2017). Her poetry and essays have appeared in or are forthcoming from: Poet Lore, Hobart, Levee Magazine, and more. She currently lives in Pennsylvania and writes with the Madwomen in the Attic at Carlow University. Find her online: www.karaknickerbocker.com.