Knives Whistle
Cut from a mail bag
without a return address,
this land whispers its name
from a waterfall’s hairline,
pressed flat under bent knee.
Lifting your head
to look past coming night—
knives whistle.
You scribble an address
to a place where weeds
door the passage back.
Stone in throat,
your hand reaches
to clutch a leaf,
as you turn
toward the rising moon—
dove-winged
Credit
Copyright © 2020 by Sherwin Bitsui. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 17, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.
About this Poem
“This poem is part of a series of postcard-like pieces. The world in the frame of the poem has transformed. A reconstructed embodiment of a new ‘here’ emerges.”
—Sherwin Bitsui
Date Published
03/17/2020