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# The Yawning Deep Early Spring / Peter Helland Wildlife Area, WI
- URL: https://www.fsm.ink/the-yawning/
- Published: 2025-08-31T17:00:48.000Z
- Updated: 2026-06-03T17:46:09.000Z
- Author: Staff
- Tags: Poetry, #Import 2026-08-03 09:59

*by Keith Phelps*

The country washed in ochre,  
sculpted by smoke plume.  
  
Redwing trill. Gray dogwood, inundated marsh.  
Geese fly letters. On the ridge,  
  
oaks rattle their dead rusted  
Leaves, waiting to break buds  
 Wide, wide open.  
  
Everything churns, stretches:  
the lifetime of songbirds, mud nests  
or black calves lowing.  
  
Spilling fuel, we birth fire  
weaving flame to clear barrens  
for pasque flower, puccoon, bushclover.  
  
Flames cinder to sweetened smoke,  
leaving aster and little bluestem  
stalks to shred in the wind.  
  
Locals sift for discarded pearls  
of bronzed antlers on the ash bed.  
  
Life becomes pourable.  
What is stone under the blushing  
  
morning, by dusk is cracking,  
Molting, and oozing everywhere.

> Keith Phelps (he/his) is a poet and environmental consultant who lives in Appleton, WI. He holds a B.A. in Environmental Studies and History from UW-Madison and an M.S. in Forest Resources from Clemson University. Through art, Keith is primarily interested in exploring the tethers between humanness and nonhumanness, our journeys in loss and birth, and the preservation of the past and future.