of the quaking aspen and river birch
the broad-leafed painted sycamore.
I will listen to the sermons
of the darting dragonfly and sluggish
stink bug on their different instructions
for living.
I will walk out beneath the cathedral of blue
and join the eager congregations
of midges and mosquitoes celebrating
my arrival. I will worship at the scaly
feet of the great blue heron that meditates
on the shore and tremble beneath
the eagle’s circling shadow. I will bow
before the brown-eyed doe
and her two awkward fawns
that traverse, ever vigilant, wood to lawn
and I will pray, as hard as any fervent
penitent, that when our burdened souls
return here to pray, we will not find a blackened
trunk where once green spires stood
or a dried riverbed
where once the salmon came to spawn.
—
Deidra Greenleaf Allan has been published in American Poetry Review, Apiary Magazine, Poetry Miscellany, Puerto del Sol, West Branch, Quartet Journal, and Hole in the Head, among other print and online journals. In 2001 she was selected as Montgomery County Poet Laureate in a competition judged by Robert Hass. She has received a Leeway Emerging Artist Award and been a finalist for a Pew Fellowship in poetry. Her poem “Apostrophe to the Living” was selected in 2012 by Musehouse as its Poem of Hope poster.
