Green Face

What if no words remain?

What if they are lost?

Abandoned, dispersed, powerless?

The Poets are there,

in the rooms you visit.

They acknowledge you,

even welcome you.

They open the green robe,

encircle you

and drape it from your shoulders.

You find words in green thickets,

words greening,

words swelling,

words fruiting.

You see words soughing in beeches and oaks,

sighing in ribbed, roadside grasses,

whispering in sand, loess, peat and clay

whistling and singing around mountain peaks

lilting down valleys

humming through ripe-grained fields

riding rivers’ rapids,

rattling gravel beds,

jostling boulders

churning and crashing over falls

spinning and spiraling in whirlpools

lazing languidly in lakes

You hear words rushing,

cascading over the land

down, down to the ocean

who claims them

at the edge.

Her words are in the green faces you painted

when your own words were locked.

Now you are the face of green

you hear her songs

you know her singing.

You are her prophet;

you are her singer;

She, the long green woman,

voice of the land.