In memoriam by Lynne Knight

white apples and the taste of stone

Donald Hall, “White Apples”

The old master is dead,

his gravestone already marked

with lines from a poem

by his wife, whose peonies

blossomed and toppled outside

while he lay in hospice.

Soon his granddaughter will live

in the ancestral house looking out

at blue Mount Kearsarge.

Those curved ribs of old horses

buried in the field will again yield

their crop of goldenrod.

Dark clouds over Eagle Pond

turn white as the taste of stone,

white as white apples.

 

Originally published online in Rattle (Poets Respond)

Lynne Knight is the author of six full-length poetry collections, three of them prize winners, and of five chapbooks, three of them also prize winners. Her work has appeared in many journals, including Kenyon Review, Poetry and Southern Review. Her other awards and honors include publication in Best American Poetry, the Prix de l’Alliance Française 2006, a PSA Lucille Medwick Memorial Award, a RATTLE Poetry Prize, and an NEA grant. I Know (Je sais), her translation with the author Ito Naga of his Je sais, appeared in 2013. In March of 2018, she became a permanent resi