Cape Cod National Seashore
Beech Forest trailhead
Race Point Road
Provincetown, MA 02657
United States
On June 14 at 10 a.m., the public is invited to join Ada Limón for the National Parks Service “Poetry in Parks” unveiling at the trailhead, followed by a short, guided hike on the Beech Forest Trail. This event is open to the public.
U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón will unveil a picnic table with an overlay featuring Mary Oliver’s poem “Can You Imagine?” at the trailhead of the Beech Forest Trail. Oliver was a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet who lived in the Provincetown area for more than 50 years. Oliver was known for her nature poetry and Beech Forest was a special respite for her.
Seven national parks, including Cape Cod National Seashore, were selected by Limón to be part of her signature project “You are Here: Poetry in Parks.” The initiative is a partnership with the Library of Congress, the National Park Service, and the Poetry Society of America that features site-specific poetry installations in the parks. Each one will transform a picnic table into a work of public art by featuring a historic American poem that relates to the park in a meaningful way.
Learn more about You Are Here here.
Ada Limón
Ada Limón is the twenty-fourth U.S. Poet Laureate as well as the author of The Hurting Kind and five other collections of poems.
A 2025 National Endowment for the Arts Big Reads Selection
A 2024 NPR “Books We Love” Selection
Published in association with the Library of Congress and edited by the twenty-fourth Poet Laureate of the United States, a singular collection of fifty poems reflecting on our relationship to the natural world by our most celebrated contemporary writers.