A quaking aspen entity of 50,000 trees
in a fish lake forest in central Utah,
where a litter of kit foxes snore
where black ants are on the march
where crickets rub sore legs together
where desert winds are whispering
where tree frogs serenade the moon
where grackles congregate in corn
where spiders spin a woven orb
where mass is more than gravity
where shadows in the saplings sing
where butterflies beget new sorrows
where mason bees are sipping nectar
where rain arrives in thunderstorms
where deer are ravaging a forest floor
where the sun comes up upon a hill
where rangers douse a surface fire
where swallows gorge on stable flies
where snow is carpeting the sedge
where gravel runs down rivulets
where a bear enjoys a clover honey
where minks are running for their lives
where petals of the water lily drop
where we record the aspens quivering,
each one of them connected underneath.
—
William Allen has previously published poetry books with New York University and Persea Presses (The Man on the Moon, 1987), Xenos Press (Sevastopol: On Photographs of War, 1997), Clay Street Press (North Passage, 2018), and Spuyten Duivil Press (The Largest Glue Factory in the World, 2024). He was awarded a 2009 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship with residencies at Yaddo, Breadloaf and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.
