Poetry $16


Near Odessa

Near the end of summer.
Wheatfield with lark. With swift,
longspur, and sparrow. I see the birds
opening tails and wings
above grasses
and hidden nests.
Soybeans with bells, yellowing, green
tassels of corn, geese
again and again.
I see the birds
but wind takes all the sound.
Small towns are reduced to chains or storefronts,
boarded-up.
Almost to the river called a lake, gray stones of water,
dammed, white-capped, hinge
between states.
Some fields are so gold they seem to be singing.
The gold fields lie down, flat but not empty,
and will be harvested later with blades.
Near Odessa
I come to a place where the end is beginning.
Where the light is absolute, it rises.


Patricia Kirkpatrick is the author of Century's Road, as well as several chapbooks of poetry. Her work has appeared widely in journals, including Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Threepenny Review, and Antioch Review, and in several anthologies, among them She Walks in Beauty: A Woman's Journey Through Poems, edited by Caroline Kennedy. Kirkpatrick lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota.