- Fractal Elegy, and: Doldrums
Fractal Elegy
for my grandfather
He was in a poem once, alive at the beginning, dead by the middle, haunting me at the end.
The field that holds his body turns by measures green, yellow, white, and green again.
The beech grove surrounding the field that holds his body changes too, with the grasses, like the grasses.
But the stone scarred with his name tells exactly the same story over and over every day,
the way ghosts are said to repeat the darkest moments of their lives throughout eternity. [End Page 90]
Doldrums
In the stillness of a windless day, trees stand full, and proud, and straight.
But you see in the windlessness the inevitability of your life’s last day
when your breath will be the final small gust of air to stir the leaves
that shade your face from the indifferent sun, the day when you realize you haven’t lived
the life you thought you would hack to pieces and burn like so much firewood. [End Page 91]
Kip Knott’s writing has appeared in Beloit Fiction Journal, the Gettysburg Review, Mid-American Review, and the Sun. His most recent collection of poetry is Afraid of Heaven (Mudlark, 2013). He teaches at Columbus State Community College.