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What Poems Must You Write

www.wayfaremagazine.org
Poetry

What Poems Must You Write

Kathryn Knight Sonntag
Feb 27
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What Poems Must You Write

www.wayfaremagazine.org
This is a painting of Unknown, by 
Unknown. I vanish the cloak of my over-

delicate longing as the crab apple fills 
with waxwings like a mother— longer 

than infinity— feathering into a sleep 
that outlasts the ages, and leaves you 

in a nest of matrons craving the fractious 
winging of boughs, perfuming the just-still 

of soft light as its fingers uncoil across 
the just-green grasses to my face and pale 

fingers. The ground no longer freezes as 
it once did. Sunsets are impossible 

to take in and render me swallowed up 
in some deeper being. Maybe a question 

is just a prayer, and the story never ends. 
I write swallows lodged in my throat 

from the blood in me that is carved 
wood and ageless stone. My tides push up 

against your longing— the silence in that 
breaks over my skin as I slip past the frame.

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What Poems Must You Write

www.wayfaremagazine.org
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A guest post by
Kathryn Knight Sonntag
Kathryn Knight Sonntag is the author of The Mother Tree: Discovering the Love and Wisdom of Our Divine Mother (Faith Matters Publishing, 2022) and The Tree at the Center (BCC Press, 2019).
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