"Catoctin Mountain Park," included in Flourish, was commissioned as part of the Imagine Our Parks With Poems project. In celebration of the National Park Service Centennial, the Academy of American Poets commissioned fifty poets to write poems about a park in each of the fifty states. I was asked to represent the state of Maryland. This project is part of Imagine Your Parks, a grant initiative from the National Endowment for the Arts created in partnership with the National Park Service to support projects that use the arts to engage people with the memorable places and landscapes of the National Park System. The poem itself is followed by my commentary on my process in writing the poem. You can read both poem and commentary here, or follow the link in the "Flourish: Poems to Read Online" document.