Written by: Elijah Polance
First Place Winner of the 2026 Wallace Stevens Poetry Contest
Not yet shivering,
camera in hand, the trail
slopes downward from me.
I spot a figure drifting
in the corridor of trees,
barren and wind-struck.
An ant beside those monster
legs, blink and he’s gone.
Vanished as the trees were, long
before. Forest for farmland.
Still, glacial stones mark
old property in piles, moss
stretching across rock.
These ruin outcrops ground
woods in their isolation,
dead leaves gathered with-
in gaping gneiss gaps, the space
of bordering curves.
Signs say the farmers fled to
cities. So the green reclaimed.
From quarter mile back,
a car horn blares over the
birds and I frown to
no one. C-lot stirs, mostly
empty, a pavement cover
up. Containing filth
from the UConn Landfill, leaks
mandating closure.
I march in further, where gray
shelf fungi ruptures birch, small
pustule huts. Above,
lighter brown relatives scale
like peeling bark flaps.
A warm welcome set aside
for public recreation
and education.
One hundred and sixty-five
acres protected.
See fox droppings centered on
schist, pointy, seeds poking out.
Two shrooms sprout from log,
Sun turning perimeter
into a halo.
Beside it, detached fungi
rest, bone white, the dirt inside
giving depth and a
likeness to half-smashed mouse skull.
I cherish the sight.
Mandated by CT DEEP,
HEEP first made up for land filled,
then road extension.
Hillside Environmental
Education Park
is a state-ordered redress
that grows with the roads. Look down.
A centimeter
peel of wood juts out from a
fallen branch. Jagged
grooves shoot up and down the stub,
miming hardened mushroom gills.
I get lost in it.
And in the pumpkin-sized gall
budding from oak. The
cyst stares from across a stream
and I bridge the gap to feel
the growth and learn it’s
wood. A shield from unseen threats,
bulbous but unmoved.
I wonder what compelled the
giant to guard itself so.
Remediated
does not mean gone, it lingers
like the old stone walls.
Reeking and leaking, toxins
seep out below while methane
blasts from hidden vents
beyond capability
of our smell, nestling
elsewhere up above. For a
future problem, one that can’t
be remedied with
vernal pools and fungi homes.
But there’s no leachate
before me, only trees and
trails to walk and signs to read.