Editor’s Note: Scudder Parker’s poetry explores many important topics, but this exploration of Moose Bog in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom—and the legacy of heavy logging in that region—seems especially timely. The bog is on state land, surrounded by the federally protected Conte Wildlife Refuge. Deep in the heart of the refuge, former industrial paper-producing lands, is another bog honoring the late Mollie Beattie, of whom we write in this issue. She was a staunch supporter of the protection of habitat for wildlife, which these bogs so importantly provide. - Liz Thompson

Moose Bog

1.
The blue-headed vireo pokes its thread of song
in and out among balsam buds erupting like
green caterpillars the first red maple leaves.

Each hop unpredictable and yet decisive
its body knows just how to stitch shafts
of sun to recovering winter branches.

We hope a spruce grouse will land on that
rotting log parade for us in the innocent
glory that makes it easy prey for hunters.

It never learns. Today it doesn’t come to our
benign impatience. A black-backed woodpecker
hammers pries its way along a tilting spruce.

2.
We stopped in Island Pond for coffee talked
with the tired waitress walked down gravel flecked
with colored plastic graded to the water.

A loon patrolled alert aloof chick nestled
on its regal back—another summer-only visitor—
unfazed by cottages along the shore.

This is where my father started preaching
sixty years ago. He was laboring
to find his voice and—as he could—to listen.

The once thriving village was collapsing
like a pumpkin in November. Forests
cut down Abenaki and loggers moved on.

The trains still ran but less often. More
and more of them just passing through.
Stores churches greyed out of their prosperity.

3.
Today a band of Christians in plain dress
private with a message that demands
belief runs most businesses in town.

They have the energy that drove ambitious
pioneers. Old-timers here can’t yet decide
if that’s hope or simply too much pride.

At the rail yard western lumber wrapped
in plastic waits transfer to become
construction in some optimistic place.

The forest recovers like a ravaged nation.
No pulp mills left to use this spruce and fir.
Some think backwater. Some salvation.

4.
In the bog pitcher plants sprout blood-red
blossoms. Sundew closes on its insects
lip-fingers clasped as though in prayer.

In a beaver pond dead trees stand sentinel.
A pair of woodpeckers take turns
disappearing in the farthest stem.

No creature here is prospering or seeking
righteousness. Just doing what they can
the way they learned since the last glacier.

White admirals are feeding in the puddles
on the road some broken one wing
to the ground as pickups pass. Gray jays

hoarding raucous. Moose chomp lily-pads.
Lynx come back for hares. We come
hungry from our ordinary lives.

Scudder Parker’s first volume of poetry, Safe as Lightning, released in June 2020 by Rootstock Publishing, was awarded the Best Poetry Book of 2020 by the Independent Publishers of New England (IPNE). Scudder’s poetry has appeared in numerous literary journals including Sun Magazine, Crosswinds, The Lascaux Review, Sky Island Journal, Vermont Life, Northern Woodlands, and Twyckenham. His poem The Poem of the World was selected as a finalist in the Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest.

For Scudder, poetry is the search for truthfulness, not homage to conclusion. It is exploration—fit of bone in socket, bees at riot in oregano blossoms, ache of old injustice summoning an opened heart, the strange joy of longing, laughter at long-defended foolishness. Family, farming, failing, finding. Foraging for the innocent sacred, patient in our midst. Scudder’s had numerous careers—preacher, organizer, gardener, politician, energy consultant, poet—and is still learning from each of them. His new volume, The Poem of the World, published by Kelsay Books, is now available in bookstores and online. You can follow Scudder’s work at Substack.

Moose Bog

Moose Bog

Wolves in the West, Wolves in the East

Beaver and The People