Poetry | Green

Green

©2018 Vernon Miles Kerr

I am Vernon

Vernon was "green" in Latin.

My thumb is green,

My mind is green,

My spirit is green,

From the forest duff on a trail through this grove of giants

I stand in reverence

Contemplating the rough, expansive, red-brown foot of the father of the forest.

I gaze upward along his fire-scarrd side

Whose gashes of black reveal where lesser trees have died

Resting their heads while being consumed by forgotten fires.

Finally, I reach his verdant face, shining so high above the sylvan gloom

That my equilibrium is stolen and I stagger backward.

His tranquil spirit intertwines with mine,

His green spirit infuses mine

And I share for a second, his flowing sense of time —

Abundant, luxuriant time; inscrutable time.

When his containing seed cracked and his tiny head first glimpsed the sun

Filtering through his ancestors’ living canopy, high above,

Pyramids were building in Egypt.

In his adolescence Socrates taught Plato

And a moment later Rome rose and fell.

At his majority Polo was presented at the court of Kahn

And in his and man’s middle-age, so-called reason dawned

And many reasonable wars were fought and won

While interlopers ranged through this — his home — killing his sibblings to create curiosities for puny, temporary men like me to use for self-indulgent entertainment.

He told me this

Because I am Vernon,

My name means "green."