Poem of the Month – January 2024

Crystal Karlberg

In The New Year

My children scatter likes stones and all
of last year’s accumulated knowledge

is already useless. Extant is a passive way
of saying we exist. Once I lost my car

in the airport parking lot. What is terminal
in Nature? What is the nature of illness?

You can bear a burden or bare your soul
with all the same letters, but arrangement

is everything. My mother knew about flowers,
how to bash their stems with the butt of a knife

to keep them drinking. Warm water is more
enticing to most people, though hot springs

in Kentucky offer bliss in winter. Even ignorance
isn’t enough to keep the buffaloes in Turkey

from wading in up to their elbows. Something
about milk and later cheese, all reported by an eye-

witness. Words like baby get lost in translation
as if there’s nothing left to say

when all we set out to do was heal old wounds. Not
new ones, that would be insane. I see the mystical

mammal in you. I bow down. I roll around. Impatient.
The oldest woman is now one hundred and

nineteen years old. When asked how she managed
to live so long, she said: Family is so important.