Poetry | Green | Mary Ann Schaefer

Green listen
Now is the time between blue
and yellow when overnight
the thickening permeation

of green uplifts the canopy
and carpets unroll across
the landing, foliated

flakes of leaf and blade,
a million million
chlorophyllous faces

yawning, spreading like
wings that beat against
the long edgeless light

with fluttering applause.
The lush is so luscious,
how can you not lick it, in-

hale it, swallow the greenly
burgeoning, the blurting
alchemical gamut:  spinach

beets, wild sage ... fern and
moss and pine ... asparagus,
algae, olive, unripened lemons,

pea green, apple green, mint,
meadow grass, blue grass, sweet
grass, river and ribbon grass,

graze and gobble, maize and oats,
timothy, barley, rye, wheat —
go ahead, fall to your knees

in the humid jungle of backyards,
outfields, overgrown cemeteries,
and savor the verdant sweat.

You can't help yourself, your
willow self swaying both lazy
and restless, your green blood

pulsing, green breath transpiring,
lustful as garden edibles brushing
against fireweed and thistle and

burning with thirst.  Isn't this
greenhood the lawless country
that larks sing about, the embryo

and the afterlife transposing,
the sleepless realization we are all
standing in the same place we started,

posing naked in the glare and
rain, realizing each livelong
day as the first and last.