green

I live in a green place, wrap the green around me like a clean sheet dried outside on the line. I have only to breath it in to be rejuvenated. It is fresh like wind and wheat grass, spicy like pine sap and sweet corn. I roam around these green hills, under leafy forest roofs, align myself with politically active groups and fight to legislate this green, make its continued existance law, cling to it with all that is in me.

This is home and you cannot take this green out of me. It is under my nails. It is mixed with the black behind my eyelids. It grows in a deep place, tickles my spirit with its tendrils. This green place is open space and close community. It is balance--between black earth and blue sky, between roots and flight.

Behind my house is a row of pines--green, still, when all else is sepia and white. Ever green. Beyond the pines, a green field turning golden only with the first frost. Beyond that--forest, lake, ridgetop. Even in the coldest season, the frigid winter snows melt in places along streams and under trees, teasing out patches of green grass and crocuses. Even as my heart starts to go frosty and forget, when it's easy to stop believing in renewal of the landscapes inside and outside me, I am forced to face the ever-coming changes, time progressing, the ever re-greening.

My view from the highest places undulates, rolls, separates into deep, green ravines, flows away from me in creeks and still lakes. When you empty your pockets, I am not the rock with rough edges. I am smoothed by the flow, comforting and cool in your hand. I have gathered soft, green moss. This green and I are inseparable.