​​I think I see 
                         clearly now 
                                    the squirrel that’s digging up the bulbs. The iris hailing. 
The deer eye to eye before they startle. 

I see the green beads at the nexus of the cluster. 
The black snake in the presence of 

                         surprise. When was the last time 
I looked as if I’d never see 

again the bees in late October, interrogating thistle, 
the varnished leaves.

When did it all start to bluff—this groping blind, only seeing what’s required, only briefly 
fixing on a point in a universe of patterns, the mind 
                                                           only briefly ravished? 
​Kathleen Hellen’s collections include Meet Me at the Bottom, The Only Country Was the Color of My Skin, and Umberto’s Night, and two chapbooks, The Girl Who Loved Mothra and Pentimento. Featured on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily, her work has appeared widely in such journals as Arts & Letters, Cimarron Review, Colorado Review, Massachusetts Review, New Letters, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, The Sewanee Review, Southern Humanities Review, The Sycamore Review, and West Branch, among others. She is the recipient of the poetry prize from Washington Writers’ Publishing House, and prizes from the H.O.W. Journal and Washington Square Review.