In late winter woods
sap seeps; still green,
the ferns are flat as maps;
the stones, road signs,
edge a steep path from north
that’s streaked with roots.
Roots, my grandfather used to say,
They’ll trip you if you don’t look out.
But I’ve learned they bind
the earth together
with their lovely rules.
Zigzagging down,
I spook a doe; her flag flies.
This white’s my direction,
lost and found.
Karen Kilcup has been named the Linda Arnold Carlisle Distinguished Excellence Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies.; most recently, she was named the Elizabeth Rosenthal Excellence Professor of English, Environment & Sustainability Studies, and Women’s & Gender Studies at UNC-Greensboro. Her poetry book manuscript "The Art of Restoration" received the 2021 Winter Goose Poetry Prize and will be published by Winter Goose Publishing. Kilcup has also received Andrew W. Mellon and National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships. Kilcup is also the author of Fallen Forests: Emotion, Embodiment, and Ethics in American Women’s Environmental Writing (University of Georgia Press) and Who Killed American Poetry (University of Michigan Press), among others.
