Exit the news
of modern barbarians,
contemporary famine,
men with no manners.
Clear your cache.
Erase your memory.
Turn off your phone.
How many months
unraveled
since you turned off
your phone? Even
outside it’s easy
to train your lenses
on loss: The pair
of geese at Lake Harriet
have two goslings
now, not three,
so you look away,
toward the bank.
Then fervent rippling
at water’s surface
grows into
a muskrat’s nose
as its body
sleeks toward the bank.
You’re here
earlier than usual,
so here come the dogs
walked by professionals
with 8 leashes each
(32 paws and 16 ears
not looking for trouble
but hoping to find it).
Groups of purple-blue
cornflowers stand despite last night’s thunderous rain. A squirrel runs to the base of a tree and seems to kiss it. What else is worth surrendering yourself to but this?
Janna Knittel is the author of Real Work (Nodin, 2022), a finalist for the 2023 Minnesota Book Award in poetry, and the chapbook Fish & Wild Life (Finishing Line, 2018). Janna has also published poems in Blue Mountain Review, Conduit, Constellations, North Dakota Quarterly, Pleiades, The Trumpeter, and The Wild Word as well as the following anthologies: Waters Deep: A Great Lakes Anthology (Split Rock, 2018); The Experiment Will Not Be Bound (Unbound Edition, 2023); and Broad Wings, Long Legs: A Rookery of Heron Poems (North Star, forthcoming 2023). Janna lives in Minnesota but “home” is still the Pacific Northwest.