ON THE GREEN PATH

Green was what postal boxes used to be.

A cardboard Christmas tree decorated in green suckers

for my fourth birthday.

My father’s abstract ceramic art, made in his own youth,

sitting always on top his dresser in my parents’ bedroom.

Green was part of a neighbour’s name down the street.

My mother’s Tupperware cannisters.

My peddle-break bike that doubled as a popcorn maker

when balanced up-side-down, pebbles tossed in the fenders

while I spun the wheels and made believe.

Green was the tiny book on horses I took from my bookshelf

when I woke from a nightmare.

The first path I honed my cross country skis on at thirteen.

And green was the lady with green streamer hair

who, in my dream, whisked us away to an alternate world.

.

Now green is when I leave the city for the woods,

early spring Frost’s gold, cool mossy forest beds I fancy sleeping on.

The echo of a throaty bird, if a colour, would be green.

Green is summer grass poking up in bunches on dirt paths.

I once saw a fat green caterpillar mimicking the leaf it sat on.

.

Green is an old time love affair

I hold in my red heart like Christmas morning

and the faux candle-lit spruce that waits gift-laden in the living room…

Like the dark green overalls my mother sewed for my doll

waiting at the bottom of the stairs, now sported by a sock monkey

I sewed for my niece.

.

I am in love, yes,

with the green knowledge that we are all always just beginning,

and what wonders , if we embrace this, may materialize.