The Grapevine Art & Soul Salon

PRESENTATIONS: JONATHAN MICHAEL KNOTT

Jonathan Knott, Host of The Grapevine's Tracking History column, also writes reviews and features. Many of the photographs on the site were taken by Jonathan, whose studies include history, biology, psychology, film, and creative writing. He also graduated from Georgia Film School and took Warner Herzog's Film Master Class online. He is a member of the Atlanta Writers Club.

Love Song to the Owl

I left my warren, cozy and warm, behind.
Striking out into the frozen moonlight
I heard you beckon in the stillness.
The eerie music of your cry
brought me to your tree as though
I were a wingless nestling returning from a great fall.

Your eyes held me in sway,
yellow and haunting.
I saw in them the goddess Athena
sprung fresh and eternal from the forehead of Zeus
fierce, milkwhite and virginal.
I wanted to penetrate your snakeskin shield.

Like many before me, I fell into your eyes
ignoring talons and beak.
The pain was acute and blissful. You
devoured me whole, leaving my clean
bones wrapped neatly in a pellet of fur.
How sweet, to drop me so warm
into the frost-rimmed darkness.

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The following poem was one of three finalists in Atlanta Writers Club's competition for the Natasha Trethewey prize in poetry. He also was one of only 27 finalists in a field of 5,539 poets who submitted a humorous poem (this one) to Winning Writers' Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Contest.

Sonnet to Soap and Wax

Emerging from the household cleaning aisle
with lemon oil, a mop, a toilet brush
I see you palm some clustered grapes and smile:
pomegranate red, I say, of hair so lush

a face so pale among the lettuces.
Entranced, I follow you through bread and cheese
and juices tart and sweet and wet. Who says
a grocery store is not a place to please

the senses has not met you yet beside
the scented candle jars, and eye to eye
inhaled with you, unable to decide
rum or cinnamon or rose to try.

A fantasy of love engenders hope,
steals moments even in the aisle of soap.

Copyright@Jonathan Michael Knott

To read more pieces by Jonathan, go to his writer's page by clicking on Contributing Artists and his name.