A Response to a Pair of Forest Plots

Derek Sheffield

is my assignment. But all the firs 

in the first that was clear-cut and 

replanted huddle thick together 

exactly alike, exactly where twenty

years ago each was boot-stamped 

to grow into this big dark box.

And while the second was thinned

then—less crowded with intent, a little light 

spilling through—I can’t help 

but see every sizable tree still grows

right where someone 

shook a rattle can and sprayed. 

Something else entirely

here in the roadside ditch

in blue ruffled dabs

among the untidy 

grasses—wild

irises, where I kneel

to better see

white starbursts veined

with lines thin as moth legs

upon the splayed sepals—

and feel the slight space 

held by the petals

that curl up and in like

tongues toward one other,

  touch 

without touching,

and hold.

DEREK SHEFFIELD’s collection, Not for Luck, was selected by Mark Doty for the Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize. Read More

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Derek Sheffield’s poem “A Response to a Pair of Forest Plots” was previously published in Not for Luck (MSU Press, 2021) and is reprinted here by permission of the author.