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.
