Just Before the Autumn Equinox
Just Before the Autumn Equinox
A Poem by Janna Knittel
Loons or grebes? Too far to see
but their diving hails a change of season
on the lake. A change of season in you,
felt beneath your ribs, an ache. Felt in
your knees, a louder creak. Black and white birds
concentrate their energies on dipping
minnows from green water. Life needs no other
meaning. Except to create more loons and grebes.
More than halfway into your own migration
you pause with them. What will you create?
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.