71. The Greenness Here

green in place
of darkness in place
of sleep

from which green
spot this port
will lead, over what water,
to which ends,
and to which where
of which one’s expedition of thinking
and thought

pine needles splinter off
trees in darkness
as green, as black, as
night, and scent of green
or a green scent
abounding

needle that
one might sew together
the pieces of this place
of water, of earth, of tree
and sand, and sometimes
the boundary between
what is dark and daylight
and what is bright
and night

eyeless they might as well be
and wander nights (offspring
of nothing more than stardust)
searching the green
(and for it)
that doesn’t exist anymore,
casualties of darkness

a rock in a palm
from the seashore
that is not a shell
or a worn piece
of glass that is not
green or that once
was (if it were glass
and glasseyed,
seaglass and seeglass,
what you see through
to light and only so),
it is that rock that
holds you, greenly
in place in a place where
you see no green
but smell and feel it
through to sight

recognitions adhere
and simulate

through inaudible green
you sing to the water,
to the night, the interface between
here and what there is solid
and there and what there is
liquid and moving, untouchable,
various, and new by its various
means of being itself

the sound of stars
rings down
almost as loud
as clouds

trees with green needles
growing in sand and twisted
out of green yet still
things of green

in harbor, in
a space of water rounded
off to allow for metal lines,
separations defying
the distance between the green
water of the boat and
the boat ungreened at night

thus this is a poem and what
a poem must be (words, simply
words) greened out of blackness, just
a little space to put down some
thing green and whatever
it means

your greatest feat:
to be a poem,
a bundle of green words
bound for forests of green
and subtle confusion