levelheaded: Poem for a State Forest

At a glance, we might think we’re getting into a nature poem. The poem is not without its mountain vista and pine trees, but this is a nature poem that recognizes we perceive the natural world from within our humanity. The forest gets top billing, and the poem is certainly an appreciation of nature, but when the first line shifts immediately to the speaker’s “idea of mountains,” it’s clear the poem wants to do more than praise scenery. And on second glance, we notice the poem is addressed to a “State” forest. This isn’t just any forest; it’s defined by its relationship to a humankind.

The speaker’s rumination on a state forest is interrupted by “a 747”, “a power plant” and in a happier moment, “a green toyota.” These interruptions work in tandem with grammatical interruptions. The word “however” has a disorienting effect in the first few lines. The speaker’s “idea of mountains” is challenged by a more granular look at “the pines.” His “idea” replaced by the celebratory “clap & fall asleep” so that the idea is defined by his experience of the mountains with the poem’s “you.” Later in the lines “I held you full / of suddenly you spoke,” the word “suddenly” jerks him out of his gauzy nostalgia into the poem’s final metaphor.

In the poem’s final metaphor, the speaker uses an echo to cobble the disparate parts of the poem – memories and dreams, airplanes and automobiles – into an understanding about what it means to “come back / mostly unscathed” from one’s travels, from one’s ideas. For the speaker, “mostly unscathed” is as good as it gets. There is a hint of longing (“unscathed” is more “not bad” than “good”), but it follows a professed happiness, and the poem’s prior approximation of an echo, “I dream a power plant / I plant a flower,” transforms something big, artificial, and poisonous into something small, natural, and beautiful.

– The Editors