Poetry for the Wild: "Heartwood"

For Vermont’s Bill H606

And on some mornings,

it seems as if the dawn

sun shines not upon but

inside these spring trees.

That they burn from within.

These mornings it is clear

that these trees are not

individual beings but one

larger thing—a unit, or,

better, a living earth organ

beating and pumping,

swallowing our mistakes.

Sean Prentiss is the author of Finding Abbey: the Search for Edward Abbey and His Hidden Desert Grave and Crosscut: Poems. His writing has won the National Outdoor Book Award. He lives beside Woodbury Mountain Wilderness Preserve.

FINDING ABBEY by Sean Prentiss. Photo: Zack Porter