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August 2020
Tricia Knoll
triciaknoll@gmail.com / triciaknoll.com
Bio Note: In these lazy days of summer I seem to have an unusual number of decisions to make about my poetry manuscripts, or maybe it's just that the isolation of COVID days increases tendency to be obsessive. The good news is that I'm writing a lot and having fun with it — and finding energy to poke at the darkness descending.

Thirty Things a Poet Should Know

you will pay for your coffee

no hat is right for every occasion and wearing black does not promise recognition

when you hear a bird call, give it a name

cows kill more people each year than sharks do

few can name the sixty-some English names for pink 

death does not rhyme with health, but wealth rhymes with stealth

many writers composed their best work during pandemics  

when you read a poem, your audience may think bear foot when you say barefoot

one of the greatest poets wrote an ode to salt

the world’s largest salt mine is 1,800 feet under Lake Huron 

tears evaporate unless you have a tear catcher

when praise is needed, do not hesitate

embrace yourself as both title and footnote

learn from the wind’s scansion of a noble fir in a squall

when you begin to measure life in stanzas, massage your connective tissues

pronouns take shortcuts like rivers

the muse rides her own stream, flows away until you build a raft 

imagining zebras or Kanthaka when you read horse is acceptable

hoard your matches for when the way is dark

tender your sorrows

for every poet buried under cathedral stones, many languish in pauper’s fields

memorize one line that an ancient said

insure does not mean ensure

once there were more trees on earth than stars in the Milky Way 

when using a typewriter two spaces were advised after a period 

rules change 

the U. S. Constitution was printed on hemp

read your way to writing  

what you are looking for is not lost

the moon is there, somewhere
                        
©2020 Tricia Knoll
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the author (email address above) to tell her or him. You might say what it is about the poem that moves you. Writing to the author is what builds the community at Verse Virtual. It is very important. -JL
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