Read here for what happened first.
The power company plowed behind our woods again, just as the nature corridor was coming into its third year of scraggly regrowth. The flower seeds I scattered there last season. The idea that a generation or two of weeds then bushes then small trees would grow between now and the next new electric towers, the next need to plow, decades and decades in the future. But no, raze and burn. Okay, no burning except inside of me, but the equipment came closer this time. It brattled the forest-edge trees so that now, when we walk the path and stand at the top of the trail in our backyard woods, there is a sense of openness we didn’t ask for.
I mostly cannot remember the faces of trees: birch, pine, fir. The trees on the hill behind my yard are oak and other. Today, snow and golden straw grass stripe the rise. It is our wild, and the only reason we don’t move away from this house. The stand of oaks on the hill behind the powerline cutting behind the woods behind my home is half-dead, but beautiful. Next year—I’ve seen the rezoning maps—there will be streets and houses in their place. I am standing here, casting lines to myself.
Sometimes I love the land too much, the scrabbling wildlife I can’t see beneath the leaves, the birds I only recognize at the largest level of classification. I can’t remember their names, but I need them, I need them. The earth heaves a deep sigh beneath my ribs. I distrust this euphoria, that delicate wind blowing now in a different direction. I am trying to let go of something that isn’t gone yet. Blow away the phantom pain before the fact.
- inspired by Ruth Stone's poem "Euphoria"
I am ongoingly grateful to Joanna Penn Cooper at Muse with JPC for offering workshops that introduce me to poems like these and guide me into writing like this.
Check out her website for current offerings, which include the upcoming five-week Memoir in Collage workshop with Megan Baxter. I’ve taken it in the past and developed essays with Megan’s guidance like this one and this one. Highly recommend!
Also, your writing here is so engaging, Rebecca. Thank you for that, as well!
Thank you so much for helping spread the word about Megan’s class!!