Missile Silos, North Dakota

Kathleen SpivackMarch 12, 2014

Furred, the horizons

are both calling and escaping:

there must be an edge.

Near the bases on the prairie

the farms in silhouette seem homesick;

one can imagine entering their kitchens

and from the stubbled fields

birds rise up, hopeful.

Someone stands at a window

looking for a limit to vision

but the fields press out flat

in every direction

like alternatives with equal value

and young girls who dream

of leaving home

go out with the boys from

the Air Force Base,

pressing their hot doomed bodies

together on back seats of cars.

All day the boys sit

before consoles, staring

at buttons and flashing lights,

waiting to launch

irreversible missiles

on cue, the trajectories blazing

over these flat fields,

over the sky, grand and clanging,

startling the farms,

the right angled roads,

low ceilings and huddled rooms.

Kathleen Spivack

Kathleen Spivack’s memoir, With Robert Lowell and His Circle: Plath, Sexton, Rich, Bishop, Kunitz, was published recently by The University Press of New England. A History of Yearning won the London Book Festival First Prize, 2010. This poem was the third runner-up in the Foley poetry contest 2013.

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