Immersive experiences recreating spacious natural settings can offer
therapeutic benefits akin to actual nature exposure, mitigating feelings
of isolation or separation. — Mark Travers, Forbes
Called away from their phones to pick tomatoes,
my children bicker on the back hill, ankle-deep
in crabgrass, chickweed, swatting at the fog
of eyelash-legged mosquitoes. In the gutters,
dropped leaves soften to rank soup,
while the dead pine sheds grey tinder
onto savage mallow, bittercress. Surrender
would be simple—to forget plugged gutters,
brittle trees, sneakered churn of mud
on the garden path. Desert the hungry chutes
of the bird feeders, leave the hot compost
unturned. Forsake the shovel,
kick the ladder down, and lose myself
behind a high-tech mask—fever dream
of pixelated green, where hummingbirds bob
hard as lozenges, dipping mimic beaks into a bank
of hollow blossoms. Behind them, fir trees
shake their ink-sharp quills, puppeteered
by an airless breeze. On the angled hill, tomatoes
execute their bright equations, algorithm
of untouched fruit—a loneliness so blinding
I might almost mistake it for daylight.
Steph Sundermann-Zinger is a queer poet living and writing in the Baltimore area. Her work explores themes of identity, relationship, and connection with the natural world and has appeared or is forthcoming in Apple Valley Review, The Avenue, Blue Unicorn, Glass, Little Patuxent Review, Lines + Stars, Literary Mama, Split Rock Review, Writers Resist, and other journals. She was the 2023 recipient of the Ellen Conroy Kennedy Poetry Prize and a fall 2024 Writer in Residence for Yellow Arrow Publishing. Find her online at stephwritespoems.com.