The Wind Picks Up

The Wind Picks Up

I hold nothing against the wind. This early November, it grabs the red maple leaves and flicks gold ginkgo fans end over end down the driveway. The skirts of last week’s hurricane two thousand miles away wrenched arm-size hickory branches down. Like teeth falling from a jaw. Today arrows on the weather map threaten an Arctic blast and lake effect snow. Florida will freeze. I smell nascent snow, but not yet the drift-smoke of wood stoves. At the dump, stirred compost steams. Nearby, dozens of crows bobble high on fragile beech limbs. Noah Kahan: but it’s our season of the sticks. In this silence of coyotes and crickets, let me stand up to what’s coming, what eats at my bones. Falls lurk in a patch of ice, femur fracture. This old woman at high risk. Let the skinny sticks sway against this downhome pewter sky. Time and wind: no railing against what I cannot see. 

Tricia Knoll’s book, Ocean’s Laughter, records social and environmental change over time in Manzanita, Oregon. Knoll now lives in Vermont and her collection The Unknown Daughter was a finalist in the 2025 New England Poetry Club chapbook contest. She is a contributing editor to the online journal Verse Virtual. Website: triciaknoll.com