Patricia Hemminger

Patricia Hemminger's poems are inspired by her love of nature and science background. Her poems have been published most recently in Wild Roof Journal, Stillwater Review, and Cider Press Review and in her chapbooks What Do We Know of Time?  and All Things Gone. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and graduate of NYU’s Science Health and Environmental Reporting Program and of Drew University’s MFA Poetry and Poetry in Translation Program. She is currently producer of Safer Stuff, a documentary focused on solutions to environmental pollution. 

“Vega,” “Thinking About Symbiosis While Looking at a Spider’s Web,” “Glam Rats”

Listening to the falling rain, the space
between its drops, like the pause
between thoughts silence. I watch
a pair of goldfinch hover
over the Russian Sage like the twin stars

“Autumn Day,” “Connected,” and ” Wedding Anniversary”

Blue skies, seventy degrees
but it’s almost November,
the chrysanthemums hanging on.
Prickly burs fall
from the Chinese chestnut tree,
some stems loosen, others still cling.

“Do Animals Grieve Too?,” “Competition,” and “Rainy Day in New York”

The black swan fluffs
her dark wings, red beak
as surprising as the peacock’s
white plumes, gauzy half moon
wedding veil and the fact
that they both bore offspring
for the first time

“Loss,” “Walking the dog” and “How It Began”

I’ve read that visual memories
are easier to recall than words,
so when I can’t remember the name
of the tree by the garden hedge
white blossoms in springtime,
I think of our dog, Finn, basking
beneath it, long ears stroking the earth,
know it is a dogwood tree.
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