"Green"

In honor of National Poetry Month, I have been sharing my original poetry. In keeping with my recent "color poems" ("White here, "Pink" here, and "Yellow" here), I'll share an older poem called "Green."

Green

When I drove by, I thought,
I’ll sit down on a bench
at the bus station and
watch people, look at
their faces for stories
but I’ve already done that
when I was young,
before I had a car.
I was restless, my
mother said, “Why don’t you
walk down to the bus station
and watch people,”
as though there was
nothing else to do, so
I went and I
sat on a bench,
arms hanging by my
elbows from the back.
But she never said that--
I’m remembering a
bus station I’ve
never been to
in a town that
doesn’t exist but the
people here are
the same ones
who were there.
It’s like trying to be
two different people
at the same time,
the thought of all this
sickens me, my
stomach roils, it
cannot digest
things big enough to
push past the periphery
yet remain over there,
untouchable,
indestructible.
Today, everything is
green. Sometimes
on certain days,
it happens that
everything
is the same color
and this too sickens me,
sick with confusion,
sick with fatigue.
I don’t know why.
I don’t know why
any of this happens
so for comfort,
I draw pictures of
my veins or how I
imagine them to look.
They are small, safely
contained within my
own body-- they would
never want to hurt me.
They are mine--
beautiful, innocent,
green-blue,
meandering ceaselessly
but joining with others
and each other
ceaselessly,
not as though they’re
supposed to but
just as they do.

© JEF 1997