What Poems Must You Write

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.

Kathryn Knight Sonntag is the poetry editor for Wayfare and the author of The Mother Tree: Discovering the Love and Wisdom of Our Divine Mother and The Tree at the Center.