TESS TAYLOR

​Bogland 
BY SEAMUS HEANEY

for T. P. Flanagan

We have no prairies
To slice a big sun at evening--
Everywhere the eye concedes to
Encrouching horizon,

Is wooed into the cyclops' eye
Of a tarn. Our unfenced country
Is bog that keeps crusting
Between the sights of the sun.

They've taken the skeleton
Of the Great Irish Elk
Out of the peat, set it up
An astounding crate full of air.

Butter sunk under
More than a hundred years
Was recovered salty and white.
The ground itself is kind, black butter

Melting and opening underfoot,
Missing its last definition
By millions of years.
They'll never dig coal here,

Only the waterlogged trunks
Of great firs, soft as pulp.
Our pioneers keep striking
Inwards and downwards,

Every layer they strip
Seems camped on before.
The bogholes might be Atlantic seepage.
The wet centre is bottomless.

Tess Taylor is the author of five collections of poetry, including The Misremembered World, selected by Eavan Boland for the Poetry Society of America’s inaugural chapbook fellowship, and The Forage House, called “stunning” by The San Francisco Chronicle. Her book Work & Days was named one of The New York Times best books of poetry of 2016. Last West, a book about Dorothea Lange was commissioned by the MoMA and is being adapted for the stage in conjunction with the Magic Theater. Rift Zone, from Red Hen Press, was hailed as “brilliant” in the LA Times. Taylor is on air poetry reviewer for NPR’s All Things Considered, and on the faculty of Ashland University’s Low Res Program. ​