Archive of New Mexico Poetry – Emma Fitzpatrick

The Refuge

The pond clatters to wakefulness,
wild creatures sensing sun
still hidden from human eyes
an escalating clamor
yearning toward fields of grain,
harvested but not completely gleaned,
south
beyond
the ponds.

Lightness of air just tempting sight, and scouts lift from the pond,
probing southward. A paring of sun above the eastern ridge
shimmers and swarming, rushing,
an avalanche of snow geese fills the sky, sun flashing from white
wings that beat the air lights strobing
on
and off.

South, past the ponds, toward the fields of grain, men wait. Dogs
tense. Guns sound.
A glistening body swerves and falls
another and another.
There are holes in the air
that no air will rush in to fill
aching,
empty
wounds.

Another season will bring the geese again, and I will come to the refuge again,
and I will love the gleaming bodies in the sky, but still I will see
holes in the air
unhealed,
gaping,
raw.

About the Poet
Emma Fitzpatrick grew up in Decatur, Illinois, during the Great Depression and World War II, raised in a close knit Irish-Catholic family. In 1953, she received her B.A. in history from James Millikin University and, in 1975, her master’s of history from St. Louis University. She spent roughly the first half of her adult life as a housewife and mother and the more recent half as a school teacher in the Midwest and then the Southwest. She is now retired though she still substitute teaches and teaches a class for San Juan College. She spends as much time as possible in the mountains doing photography and also enjoys renewing her interest in writing.