The Green Man
He speaks for the uprooted.
A man of sorts, a twiggy Buddha.
He who interprets
the conferences of frogs,
the unpublished works
of kestrels and voles.
He’s an advocate for the underbelly
of a microbial heaven, for every kind
of uncouth animalcule.
Ancient is he, yet as fresh as tomorrow,
in green ponds he fishes for sunlight.
He plumps grassy pillows,
quilts nests for the slumbering and slippery,
gardens all dewy meadows.
He speaks for the bulldozed,
the displaced. The native and
the nomadic.
He tracks the sins
of the truculent muckrakers,
the yellow iron caterpillars.
He glides over bogs with the frogs.
Slips between the stringy and tall,
if there are no forested ways
he ambles where the wind ruffles.
He talks to the bears - they tell him
how things are going in the suburbs.
Swimming pools and trash cans,
have still to be negotiated. There must be a treaty.
He is leafy, kits and coyote love him,
Whistle-Pigs chirp like sparrows; blow their noses
to trumpet his approach.
When ducks quack his many sermons
shotguns misfire.
He is a preacher, a teacher to tics and turtles.
He is the bosky bedfellow, not a straw man,
or a hollow man – he is variegated and verdant,
a green man for me and thee
at least for now.
Copyright © Eric Ashford | Year Posted 2021
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