Julia C. Alter
I'm Supposed to Be Writing a Nature Poem
I came here to listen to the trees,
to rifle through my apologies.
The stream is either shimmering
or shivering, like someone’s shaking
a glass jar full of glass shards at the sun.
Do I eat the moss, or just put my face in it?
This morning my son pronounced rifle as riffle
when cocking his imaginary gun.
Spilanthes americana
He brings home a packet
in his pocket, printed
with roots and trees.
His dad’s girlfriend sent it,
knowing I know nothing
about seeds, that I’d need her
help to plant them properly.
Annual? Perennial?
She showed up,
and she can leave.
She laughs at me for keeping him
a baby. I know what she sees—
that I still wipe his butt,
that he still sleeps with me.
Everything’s dying, so why wouldn’t he?
Maplefields where sugar maples used to be.
He says, I want to live under a tree
and all the seeds spill out of me.
Oh say can you see—my son,
my anthem, my bunny-bee—
Julia C. Alter received her MFA in Poetry from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her poetry has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize, and appeared widely in journals. She has poems forthcoming in The Oakland Review, Permafrost, and Ecobloomspaces: Poetry at the Intersection of Identity and Place, an anthology from West Trade Review. Her full-length collection, Some Dark Familiar, was selected by Matthew Olzmann as the winner of the 2024 Sundog Poetry Book Award, and will be published in April. She lives in Vermont with her son.