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May/June 2020 • Vol. XLII No. 3 • Nature’s Nature 2020 |

Sumac

By Leslie Adrienne Miller

with lines borrowed from James Wright

A scarlet staghorn sumac ignites
the ditch and marks an end to one more
teeming season in these woods.
The furry wand is called a drupe,

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Photo of Leslie Adrienne Miller

Leslie Adrienne Miller’s collections of poetry include Y (2012), The Resurrection Trade (2007), and Eat Quite Everything You See (2002) from Graywolf Press, and Yesterday Had a Man in It (1998), Ungodliness (1994), and Staying Up for Love (1990) from Carnegie Mellon University Press.

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