Last
In the hills I was
called to open.
Dusk now. Lilac dim murmurs
over mountain glow; in golden oak,
shadows rouse. I press palm to dust, rub
soft grains between fingers, touch
chest, forehead, my hair.
This place is in me now.
Acorn woodpecker, quiet tonight,
spies me passing, red head and the flame
of one green eye. Warmth invites skin to mingle
with creosote-buttered air.
Crickets call above frenzied ants;
owl and I watch each other through
crooked oaken lattice; I wonder
who rustles, invisible,
low in the oats.
hill-top
sun-bleed
I whisper:
Thank you for loving me.
Warm wind winds my words around me,
out, away, into the night—
I should hurry now.
black-tailed deer
vulture drift
thistle crackle
wander down
Every poem is a goodbye I
can’t stop saying.
Inspired by the opening of Alison Granucci’s poem “In the woods I was.”
Krissy Kludt is the founder and executive director of Writing the Wild. Her debut poetry collection I Could Walk Forever and Know So Little, in which this poem appears, was published in March 2026 by Green Writers Press. Her work appears in the anthologies The Nature of Our Times: Poems on America’s Lands, Waters, Wildlife, and Other Natural Wonders (Paloma Press, 2025), Taking Liberties (Cutthroat, 2025), and Stories from the Trail: Field Notes on Moving Through the Wild (Wayfarer Books, 2024) and in other publications. She lives in the Driftless region of southwestern Wisconsin.
Header photo by Krissy Kludt. Photo of Krissy Kludt by Ryan Murray.
