Golden Retriever
Naps as if immortal, blond dog under ash tree, last day of summer. Opens her eyes: no squirrel. Closes her eyes. So might the Buddha, under the golden fig, sit quiet as a lotus. | Train Delayed by Lingering Fall
In the distance nothing I can name blooms as white and horizontal as low-lying clouds. Up close thistles appear to extend Indian summer. I haven’t heard from you but the undersides of poplar leaves are silver and unconcerned. They know what’s coming. I raise my eyes to the actual low-lying clouds in the partial blue sky. They gather as we move north: some are gray smoke, one a great black swan. The water we cross is immobile. The train will arrive, though we stall on a siding. Yellow loosestrife leans into the next station, but the train doesn’t stop there anymore. Suddenly, it snows. And here we are. |
Kathleen Kirk is the author of four chapbooks: Selected Roles, a set of theatre and persona poems (Moon Journal Press, 2006); Broken Sonnets (Finishing Line Press, 2009); Living on the Earth (Finishing Line Press, New Women’s Voices Series #74, 2010), and Nocturnes, forthcoming from Hyacinth Girl Press this winter. Her work appears in a variety of print and online journals, including Greensboro Review, Leveler, and Soundzine. She is the poetry editor for Escape Into Life.