Emily Patterson

Emily Patterson (she/her) is the author of the chapbooks So Much Tending Remains (2022), To Bend and Braid (2023), and haiku at 5:38 a.m. (2024). Her work has been nominated for Best Spiritual Literature and is published or forthcoming in SWWIM, Rust & Moth, CALYX, North American Review, NELLE, Wild Roof Journal, and elsewhere. In 2024, she was a finalist in the Sweet Lit Poetry Contest and runner-up in the Sundress Poetry Broadside Contest. Emily received her M.A. in Education from Ohio State University and works as a curriculum designer and editor. She lives with her family in Columbus, Ohio.

Late Morning on the Magee Marsh Trail

is the wrong time to arrive,
if you want to see birds.
Already, the light holds
too much heat. Already
invisible insects weave
a web of sound, a drone
that drowns the flick
of wings. Something
hovers in a tangle of rose
mallow—maybe a ruby-
throated or a rufous—
but all I can see are fat
bees blanketing bundles
of goldenrod, the crazed trails
cut into trunks by termites.
We trace our own spirals
on the path, try to glimpse
the gold of some kind of warbler
between branches—while brown
beetles, round as berries,
button the edge of the railing,
unbothered by any name
we might utter. Soon, brush
becomes sand, becomes
shore. Over the lake, the sky
a sudden rush of what could be
starlings: their quick, dark bodies
a singular language of blue,
wind, water, wing.