We Call It Green

We call it green,

The way the leaf makes its own

nourishment, revealing to the world

what light looks like when borrowed

to make living things grow;

And the way that trees canvas the slopes

of mountains, their bark covered in

lichens that sit eternal, silent,

and shroud the forest with mist

that hovers every morning;

And the way that moss blooms on rocks

under streams, and how meadows

explode with grass and flowers,

the tint of the earth that meets the eye

high up, orbiting among the stars;

And the way the buds arrive like baby babble

on branches in spring, emerging from

the new rings within the trunk, with its

stubborn resistance to austerity, eager

to begin their lives anew but never quite

finished mourning the life that came before;

And the way life retreats in autumn,

verdure going the way of the harvest,

entering the storehouse for the winter,

the leaves lighting themselves aflame

and yielding the hues they borrowed.

But now, everything sleeps – all is quiet.

For some souls this rest is a rehearsal

for a more distant end, while others have

met their true end in the chill of hoarfrost.

Because life, like the leaf’s light, is only

borrowed, and its opposite will always follow–

The cycle, the clock, the leaf within

The march of time, the breath that

Animates the rise and fall of the earth

And all that lives within it…

We call it green.