by Kathryn Knight Sonntag
On Seeing Haystack Rock
There were gulls circling, wind
only the sea knows. A soft
radiance lifting the edge
of the firmament, my body
passing under veils.
How to speak
of ecstatic light, diffusing
mist—each watery orb a mirror
floating in the sky.
And there, the center
I’ve circled these forty
years—four pillared covering, cubed
house of gods, tree
of orbiting lights—rock
emerging from waves as my heart
vanishing into itself.
::
Kathryn Knight Sonntag is the poetry editor of Wayfare Magazine, the author of The Mother Tree (Faith Matters Publishing, 2022), winner of the 2022 BIBA Literary Award in Non-Fiction: Religion, and of the poetry collection The Tree at the Center (BCC Press, 2019). Her poems appear most recently in Image Journal, Colorado Review, Rock & Sling, and Four Way Review. She works as a freelance writer and land planner in Salt Lake City.
Image: Jonathan Simcoe
ID: a black-and-white image of Haystack Rock in Oregon.
Psaltery & Lyre 