Climbing the Bodhi Tree & Other Poems
By Kathryn Knight Sonntag
Climbing the Bodhi Tree
And maybe
in the after
looking
back
will taste
like
cirrus
smoke
and dusk
passing—
terrestrial
desire sun-
dered—
throated
Ātman
temples
looking up
looking
down and
re-
collecting
with lotus
eyes.
tinnitus of imitative origin
imitative alarm pulled—
the static on cochleae: small shells
or screws small snails scream
I captive of decibels of no
capitulation a four-year home
to unseen invaders
mercenaries of Corti—is there a password
to absolution escape from re-reverb-
erations and swarm
sworn to rave until the end how can I hear
myvoice let/alone godvoice
under the blood | brain barrier
broken what is silence
anymore how can I
feel invincible again
Red-crowned Crane
Grus japonensis
a spindled kar-ro thrums
the underside of his gray
throat. she knows his call
it is not for her.
oscillating
he listens, calls again, trills
dropping off the edge
of a green-grey bill.
their lucky red crowns
openings to blood-red
skin—she a pebble skull
opening the world
to no deep water
surrounding no marshes
their crowns
garnets in meadow.
what holy
luck, fidelity
in their fathom-
less orbs
portends
longevity two
of
3,300.
For My Son after Reading “The Maiden Tsar”
Your baby tongue,
soft between open lips, will
soon find door, shoe, apple.
There are no guarantees
in the dark wood that will follow.
In the gaps between baby
and man are wolves,
many baba yagas.
Peering into your small, dark
mouth, I see you
running down a dark glen,
to the next cottage, unsure,
to find another hag
with bloody tricks—
heads of men
staked around her door.
On your way to destiny
are many open flowers; sick
with slumber, you become
their gaze. The help I cannot
will come to you in bird
tracks, at once here
and not at all.
Will you learn to speed
the side saddling of sounds,
signifier of lover, as once with
mother, riding across the night,
bumping up against the weaving of web
around hope and despair
in equal measure.
Mouthing home, and seeing
apple.
Kathryn Knight Sonntag is the author of the poetry collection The Tree at the Center (BCC Press, 2019). She has recent and forthcoming creative works in Psaltery & Lyre, www.visitutah.com/she, Dialogue, Shades: Literary Magazine of the University of Utah, Abstract, Wilderness Interface Zone, The Curator and the anthology Blossom as the Cliffrose (Torrey House Press, 2021). She works as a landscape architect and freelance writer in Salt Lake City, Utah.