by Kip Knott
A tree falls on the house
its anxious teetering leans
toward the roof insistent
the sound un-harsh
unhardened by time
its persistent path
and its waiting to rest
petulant bored
unwilling to stand much
longer taunting
the air daring it to be
a barrier whispering
its own name
as bark meets the hard surface
cedar on cedar
branches scratching out
a graffiti
on the roof surrounding
limbs now
that they’ve met
nonthreatening darkly
tranquil snow falls in thousands
of small bits
pile drift
into snow people forts
a cold screech of snow
melting on skin like gentle
ice cubes in a tumbler
losing coalescence coherence
un-driven
Originally from Kansas, Anne Graue has lived most of her life in New York’s Hudson Valley. Anne Graue is the author of Full and Plum-Colored Velvet, (Woodley Press, 2020) and Fig Tree in Winter (Dancing Girl Press, 2017) and has poetry in SWWIM Every Day, Verse Daily, Rivet Journal, EcoTheo Review, Flint Hills Review, ONE ART, Feral: A Journal of Poetry and Art (The Art Issue), and in print anthologies, including The Book of Donuts (Terrapin Books, 2017) and Coffee Poems (World Enough Writers, 2019). Her book reviews appear in FF2 Media, Adroit, Green Mountains Review, Glass Poetry Journal, and The Kenyon Review. She is a poetry editor for The Westchester Review. Find her on Twitter @agraue, on Instagram @amgrauepoet, and on Facebook.
Kip Knott is a writer, photographer, teacher, and part-time art dealer living in Delaware, Ohio, U.S.A. His new poetry chapbook, Distress Signals, is available from tiny wren publishing. His third full-length collection of poetry, The Other Side of Who I Am, is forthcoming in 2023 from Kelsay Books. You can follow him on Instagram at @kip.knott and read and see more of his work at kipknott.com.