Here's a poet you need to know
An excerpt from "I Could Walk Forever and Know So Little" by Krissy Kludt
Hello Friends,
Today I’m thrilled to share with you a poem by my dear friend Krissy Kludt. Krissy is one of those writers whose way of seeing sparks wonder and reverence for the natural world, and for our place as humans within it. She is a thoughtful facilitator, a great question-asker, and someone whose voice and creative leadership give me courage to keep showing up to the task of writing. I’m excited to share this poem with you because it is one many which you can find in her debut poetry collection, I Could Walk Forever and Know So Little, which is available for preorder now.
Before I share her words with you, I also want to invite you to join me and Krissy for a free, virtual Spring Equinox event we’re hosting on the evening of March 19th. It is called Tender Starts: A mini retreat on the vulnerability of new beginnings. It will be a time of gentle reflection as we welcome the change of season, both within us and in the world around us. You can learn more and register to join us here.
YES
by Krissy Kludt
you see, my love,
what feels like culmination
is only the beginning
you have been torn from your skin
drawn through the passage
set to burning
given wings
and now in the joy of this consummation
in the ecstasy of flight
you may not remember your love
for the ground under your feet
fly!
fly until you cannot
fly until your wings are weary
fly and then you may settle, lightly
on a rock, and rest
this is only the beginning, love
this wind will blow for a long time
and when you catch your breath
just slip again from the ledge
and let the rising air take you
you have only just been born
An excerpt from I Could Walk Forever and Know So Little, coming March 5, 2026 from Green Writers Press. (Used by permission. All rights reserved.)
Available now for preorder from Bookshop.org.
About the book:
Set among the oak-dotted hills and granite heights of northern California, I Could Walk Forever and Know So Little distills moments of communion with the natural world into spare, lilting language. The poems traverse ordinary days and periods of loss; they are elegy and wish. They examine motherhood and daughterhood and turn to the living land as source of solace and nurturing. Each poem reaches for reverent wakefulness, “to attend / to know how shadows move as sun shifts / to notice every fiddlehead who rises, startling.”
About Krissy Kludt:
Poet Krissy Kludt is the founder and executive director of Writing the Wild. Her debut poetry collection, I Could Walk Forever and Know So Little, is forthcoming from Green Writers Press on March 5, 2026. Her work appears in anthologies The Nature of Our Times (Paloma Press 2025), Taking Liberties (Cutthroat 2025), and Stories from the Trail (Wayfarer Books 2024), and in other publications, including Terrain.org, The Wildness We Tend, and Humana Obscura. She lives in the Driftless region of southwestern Wisconsin.