FoPhoto credit: TERRY KEARNEY via Foter.com / CC BY-NC

Beech Nut Sprouted

Allegheny ellipse, I smell it
something in the woods,
something in the deep woods.

These are not the old woods,
the remembering woods,
with trees inhabited by sylphs
and dryads, with little springs
and luring rocks with sirens
beset by swishing oceans.

These are new woods, fresh planted
after the native ones, dug up,
with rocks upon rocks in border piles
yielded too little wheat and maize and pumpkins,
and Kansas beckoned with her black hills
and open spaces, and prairie dogs.

In some near valley gleamed the orange light
of steel mills, and coal power plants
steam pluming heavenward like incense
while the fields were forgotten
and the maple seeds and acorns
and beech nuts sprouted.