Green

Consider the pale stem of the shamrock
bent, slight, in a sprawling bed of clover.

Green is for things alive,
things in the heavy thick of July,
and the color for things come back
again too --
what our dead limbs can't hold off but
welcome in song after the world melts.

Green is the boy's infield grass,
and his outfield too, stretching all the way
to his warning track, when life had neatly
painted lines and some rules to play by.

Green is what rooted the first time you
saw her with him.

Envy begins there:
a small emerald seed unfolding,
death, blooming evergreen,
piney in our heart's forest.

It's the light of the city we come
rattling and shaking to at the end of
our road, our tin bodies, straw heads,
and uncertain tails twitching in the
hot, late summer air
ripe with all our heavy questions,
our hopes, plump as pears,
and desire, pregnant on the vine.