Green Man (work in progress)

Green Man

Green Man

Discourse

A woman insists on lilies.

The man would name them tulips.

Life at territory’s edge has gone unnamed for a week.

The flowers are in place. The couple argues. A dragonfly clings to an elm branch.

A Fifth Gospel

Fish, to their feeding grounds, serpents, to their nests, field mice, to their fortresses: all sides are aligned.

Love brooks no debate. Hope is its just accountant, faith, its mediator. charity, its jailor.

Chrysalid

I’ve searched for myself

In forest I was tree.

In city I scaled the wall I was.

In ocean I’m a wave amidst swells, rolling toward the beach of dreams inside my sleep.

In air I’m almost there.

Herd

Antelope fields, rhythmic shiver of thighs. The hunted dream of flight. They dream the hunters.

Quivering, restrained, throb of quick hearts, promised pump of toned flesh animates each wink & bristle.

Tails & ears tense, cleft hooves poised, accoutered for dance, they leap.

There are no wakings. There are no wounds. They leap. They flee, wary, untamed, asleep, across rustling ways.

Persistence

Distance crossed, night breathes into trees. Rain runs the length of each leaf.

We’ve dreamt of leaving each other too many times to stay.

Gifts will linger though hands that gave are gone.

Seed

Inside these rules of conduct we’ve wrapped around our lives there’s a small stubborn seed parting its cotyledons sending its roots deeper into earth & its stem higher into air, imperceptibly, second by second not knowing how to do anything else but to grow into its becoming, despite weather, despite stony soil, despite storms that may, or may not come to quench the aspirant green.

Surf

This morning, gull’s cries mingle with surf’s voice. Each wave’s far side is a sun-flecked, troubled green. What’s nearer is mottled marble by sea foam & sand swirls until the surface is shadowed more deeply, just before a rolling crest tumbles into back-sliding water.

What was once a wave becomes an ever-thinning sheet of rushing crystal until the sloping shore insists it must recede. Ocean’s edge is marked by a thin line of drying brine & by a deeper border of dead seaweed, pebbles, crushed shells, driftwood, man’s detritus, whatever the freighted water lands at its highest reach along the tide-measured beach.

Marsh, Mid-September

I

Nothing’s missing in this emptiness.

II Sun mirrors your stare as if you were its reflection in a pool.

III

Wild geese take wing. A monarch pauses on milkweed. This road is too long for one journey.

Whatever a Bird Must Be

Each season small birds find what they seek, nest, nurture, become what they are until they are their bones then other birds become what they were in their turn until what is manifest persists beyond precedent absence to become again & again whatever a bird must be.

The Recognitions

Bone wove my shape.

Blood filled me.

Serpents sleep in my belly.

Leopards inhabit my thighs.

Antelope rest in my heels.

My hands are doves.

A dolphin swims in this ocean.

Exit

Rain’s been falling. I hear footsteps. Mist surrounds midnight. There is no need to go but you go.

Bullroarer

Alone tonight

I hold a birch twig in my hand.

When I raise my arm & swing the sound I hear is better than a whisper.

Sparrow

Delicate passerine, calm in sinew, tenacious, dead, still bird, twice-imprisoned sparrow, more precious than the eyes that watched you, caught by what no creature can escape, you rouge my lady’s water-laden eyes.

Hunter

I am a faceless danger, a wicked uncle, someone’s instrument. Though streets stay closed for me, some doors are always open. My shoes move to no music along paths no one else can follow. When the crowd asks: what for? I give them simple answers. They deserve better. There is no diminishment. only a constant geometric increase. No end to it!

What it’s like in sunlight is nothing like what it’s like in rain. I know.

I make the wind blow. When the sun comes back I squint, squeeze the trigger, watch which way the bullet flies, follow the dead bird’s fall into the lap of a dying man: like to like, as snowfall over frozen water or fire to the sphere of stars.

Appetite

Raven wakes to what must be: sun, clouds, storm, dream. Wherever he flies he knows where he is: in darkness, in light, in fog, in spite. No where’s as good as anywhere because where he is is where he wants to be. Where he holds what’s dead between his feet. Where he sips innocent blood another’s claw has shed. Where he cries victory over a fawn’s defeat & feeds until he can no longer eat.

Field Notes

Caught in mountain’s shadow red-crested, splashed-white birds drift through pines.

Red fox strides out of nowhere to cross my path, burnished fur aglow in January gray.

As simple as each image is, I can’t describe them or bring them to you.

Wings of the mute swans whistle above me as they soar down to the wind-scared surface of slate-blue lake.

How heavy is each creature? How swift to flee? How lost? How much at home?

I stare as they swirl by the stillness I’ve chosen. None stare back but some will return to study my footprints long after I walk from these leafless branches back to trackless asphalt.

Green Man

Death of echo in open air comes to nothing you can hear. No answer in leaf’s whisper.

No wisdom in bird’s call.

Green man knows no songs. Silence accrues silence.

Everything ordered must decay.