The Green

You are in the green
reaching veined fingers, a chloroplast dream
Inside every living body.
Sprites and Ents alive
But not me--I am not like the trees
When I shed leaves I shudder wince
I don't know how to die so calmly.
And the grass here--good Scottish grass
Stays lush even with freezing,
I close up shop and wait for spring
While the so-called Pansies lift their
heads under iced beards and bonnets
and the redbuds bend so gracefully
Even under icy sheets.
Even with my Vitamin D, I will be
created merely respiring, expiring, dying
consuming and where you walk
the life firework-springs between even
cement cracks, concrete docks off Staten
Island, and in the empty lots of Manhattan
your wildflowers reign.

We cut down, hack trails, bulldoze
the wild but we are fighting inevitabilities.
And when the new earth comes and we are
gone, the green will tear apart and
muscle up and fill the skyscrapers
and parking lots we constructed temporarily.
Kudzu and clover will reign,
And there will be peace.