Love Song Chlorus

Image borrowed from Yahoo

Love Song Chlorus

Since the dusky dawn primeval
when great mossy giants greened out
the sun, when all the forests bristled
and stood dense, trunk to trunk,
branches intertwining with fellowship,
there have been sapian-homo
despite their bellicose natures, who knew
exactly how to find the sky;
looking up beyond the canopy
at a green horizon, where those ancient gods
of chlorus gave us emerald green sunsets,
fifty verdant shades, so vibrant, so inviting
that yesterday cousin reptiles journeyed far
from the dankest depths of a grey-green
seething sea, tired of the darkness
and the danger, and squirmed up proud
onto the land, and one breath at a time
learned to live outside of the fetal soup,
struggling to first stand erect,
and then claim the planet for habitat,
barely noticing the others
that followed; but in a quantum blink
we stood blocked, shoulder to shoulder,
like too many rodents in our boxes and
concrete canyons, with the skree
of the trampled unheard, and the flesh
of our neighbors still in our canines, as
we seemed to forget that our tails
had not fallen off in vain, and the grand
green scheme of things was not, is not
random,

for we need to return to our green truth,
remember our roots, celebrate mold
on sun-bleached bones, tarter on teeth,
kelp scum on driftwood, and the macabre
beauty of rot as epidermis and pulp
decompose and make their way home,
past the expressway of magma, back
to the earth’s vertex, its green steaming womb,
and accept the irrefutable evidence that
it is not too late to make love
to the girl with the green eyes.

Yes, rebirth can be our reward
for partnering up with our loving planet,
whirling green in a cold universe;
just let the legions tramp by
with their lethal pilum held high,
lie peacefully in the clover and wildflowers,
heart full to bursting with green fire,
arms wide open to the sun of grass,
listening to the ladybugs who already know
hell and war and revolution
are not green.

Glenn Buttkus

February 2011

Listed as #37 over on Magpie Tales 51

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