Tricia Knoll

I Saw Winter's Witches

More than one, those scraggly black locusts

lining the gravel road to the white farmhouse

and a collapsing barn. Barren: winter unveils

twisted fingers of eerie malaise

planted for fenceposts rumored to

last longer than stone. Suckering up

as toxic clones that scratch wicked

turns of withered phrases on pewter sky.

That fence hems the pasture, last

effort to contain the emptiness

of a low sun setting on fallow pasture. If

winter witch seems too fanciful, 

thorns too cruel, wind too stiff to break,

remember locusts’ white droops

beguile honeybees in soft seasons –

witches hide in green leaf-ery. 

Tricia Knoll's poetry appears widely in journals as diverse as Kenyon Review and New Verse News as well as nine collections, either chapbook or full-length. Two came out in 2024: Wild Apples (Fernwood Press) and The Unknown Daughter (Finishing Line Press.) She is a Contributing Editor to the online journal Verse Virtual. Website: triciaknoll.com