Argument against Verdancy

There is too much green. 
I cannot stomach the boisterous 
sugar maples. Even the white pines 
tire me. What good the lake if all 
the trees with their full, wet leaves
obstruct the view? 

You wrote that even in the thick 
of it, there, you could see 
the distant hills, their bald shape.      

Give me the ridgeline in winter—
no scrub, no flowering 
dogwood, tawny husks that rattle
in the wind. 

KELLY R. SAMUELS

Kelly R. Samuels is the author of two poetry collections and four chapbooks—the most recent Oblivescence (Red Sweater Press, 2024) and Talking to Alice (Whittle Micro-Press, 2023.) She is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee with work appearing in River Styx, Massachusetts Review, Denver Quarterly, december, and RHINO. She lives in the Upper Midwest.