HEEP

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.