Stephen Knauth: “Ave”
AVE
—DRK, Christmas Eve, 2004
Small sprinkler-wet pines
shine along the road to the specialty hospital.
She seems calm this morning, after a calm night,
her drip set low, dark silver eyes.
Long term memories remain
so we look at early photos, slowly, one by one,
removed from their sleeves and held up for contemplation.
That’s my dad on the dock. Born in Baraboo.
Others meet her open gaze in silence, as if
all was understood, or incapable of so being.
And the young girl with her hands on her hips,
her thin shadow stretching the length of Monroe Street?
I lost my kite in those chestnut trees.
Enough for now, she closes her eyes.
The meal cart rattles past the door.
A tiny beetle flies up from an old arrangement,
vanishes down the polished hall.
Stephen Knauth‘s published collections include The River I Know You By and Twenty Shadows, both from Four Way Books. His work has appeared in Ploughshares, FIELD, North American Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Sun, New Letters, Poetry Daily, as well as various anthologies. Knauth has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the North Carolina Arts Council. A compendium of past work is forthcoming from Four Way Books.