At the Log Decomposition Site in the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest, a Visitation - Derek Sheffield

A poem written and ready by Derek Sheffield.Derek Sheffield is the eighth poet laureate of Washington State (2025–2027). He is the author of Not for Luck, selected by Mark Doty for the Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize, and Through the Second Skin, runner-up for the Emily Dickinson First Book Award and finalist for the Washington State Book Award. He is the co-editor, with Simmons Buntin and Elizabeth Dodd, of Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy and, with Elizabeth Bradfield and CMarie Fuhrman, Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry. His awards include the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, the Foreword Reviews Indies Book of the Year in Nature Writing, and the James Hearst Poetry Prize judged by Li-Young Lee. Derek lives on the eastern slopes of the Cascade Mountains in Central Washington and is the poetry editor of Terrain.org. Learn more at dereksheffield.com.Read the poem and discover additional content in the Winter 2026 Issue of From the Ground Up.