Great Blue Heron:
Poetry by Dan Dorman

This excerpt was originally published in Light Enters the Grove: Exploring Cuyahoga Valley National Park through Poetry, edited by Charles Malone, Carrie George, and Jason Harris (Kent State University Press, 2024). It is reprinted with permission of the press.

A literary hike through Ohio’s oldest national park. An anthology celebrating the biodiversity and staggering beauty of Cuyahoga Valley National Park, Light Enters the Grove collects 80 poems, each of which reflects its author’s unique connection to a living organism found within the park—ranging from white-tailed deer to brown bats and from Japanese honeysuckle to bloodroot. Additionally, each poem is paired with an artistic depiction of the poem’s subject that reinforces the rich relationship between artists and the natural world.

Learn more and purchase the book.

Dan Dorman’s most recent writing can be found at the Cuyahoga Public Library and Bangalore Review, with visual poems at Word for/Word and others. He graduated from the NEOMFA and teaches creative writing and composition on a wandering basis.

Header image, Common Pawpaw, by Each+Every, courtesy Kent State University Press.