One of the Cronettes
Tricia Knoll
I call myself a crone to be visible
in the muttering forest
of long-held roots.
Lest fog wipe my forehead
with mist fingers
while a church or door bell rings.
To be one, those elders –
the eighty-year-old with teenage legs,
another’s quiet hands for easing birthing and dying,
or she who watches from the lead-gray window
of third-floor finality. A soprano who crazed her voice.
I cannot design a golden mandala,
or know why she who nightly lights the forgiveness lamp,
despite all she knows, wakes to allow her outrage
to stoke the fire of a warmer, brighter morning.
We have worn necklaces of stones, chalices, and pearls,
wiped tears from the cataracts of angels,
heard babies off in the cry room,
mothers scuttling like mice to attend.
We have been handmade.
Our skirts bedraggled, the fringe on our shawls
is laced with remnants of rage and the silence
of water. We witness to woolly resilience.
The best of us have studied how
to untie knots
without tugging.
in the muttering forest
of long-held roots.
Lest fog wipe my forehead
with mist fingers
while a church or door bell rings.
To be one, those elders –
the eighty-year-old with teenage legs,
another’s quiet hands for easing birthing and dying,
or she who watches from the lead-gray window
of third-floor finality. A soprano who crazed her voice.
I cannot design a golden mandala,
or know why she who nightly lights the forgiveness lamp,
despite all she knows, wakes to allow her outrage
to stoke the fire of a warmer, brighter morning.
We have worn necklaces of stones, chalices, and pearls,
wiped tears from the cataracts of angels,
heard babies off in the cry room,
mothers scuttling like mice to attend.
We have been handmade.
Our skirts bedraggled, the fringe on our shawls
is laced with remnants of rage and the silence
of water. We witness to woolly resilience.
The best of us have studied how
to untie knots
without tugging.
Listen to Tricia read the poem here:
Working notes
This poem is from a manuscript called Gathering Marbles — my response to aging. We may fear losing marbles, but I'm working to gather this. This is a tribute to friends Derianna and Jan who show me the way. One day at my Unitarian-Universalist church library, I grabbed a book off a library shelf on Zen Buddhism. It mentioned untying knots without tugging...and that was the last line of the poem.
About the author
Tricia Knoll is a Portland, Oregon poet. More than 100 of her poems and haiku have appeared in journals and anthologies since she retired from communications work for the City of Portland in 2007. Her first chapbook Urban Wild came out from Finishing Line Press in May 2014. She volunteers as part of the poetry mentorship program with VoiceCatcher (a woman's literary journal out of Portland) and as a Master Gardener. Tricia has spasmodic dysphonia, a voice-disrupting disability, that she thinks makes her sound edgy. Much of her poetry is centered in relationships between humans and the natural world. For more, see www.triciaknoll.com