These Green-Going-to-Yellow
by Marvin Bell
This year,
I’m raising the emotional ante,
putting my face
in the leaves to be stepped on,
seeing myself among them, that is;
that is, likening
leaf-vein to artery, leaf to flesh,
the passage of a leaf in autumn
to the passage of autumn,
branch-tip and winter spaces
to possibilities, and possibility
to God. Even on East 61st Street
in the blowzy city of New York,
someone has planted a gingko
because it has leaves like fans like hands,
hand-leaves, and sex. Those lovely
Chinese hands on the sidewalks
so far from delicacy
or even, perhaps, another gender of gingko–
do we see them?
No one ever treated us so gently
as these green-going-to-yellow hands
fanned out where we walk.
No one ever fell down so quietly
and lay where we would look
when we were tired or embarrassed,
or so bowed down by humanity
that we had to watch out lest our shoes stumble,
and looked down not to look up
until something looked like parts of people
where we were walking. We have no
experience to make us see the gingko
or any other tree,
and, in our admiration for whatever grows tall
and outlives us,
we look away, or look at the middles of things,
which would not be our way
if we truly thought we were gods.
End of the poem
15 random poems
- Robert Burns: Extempore Reply To An Invitation:
- On The Wedding Of The Aeronaut poem – Ambrose Bierce poems | Poems and Poetry
- Константин Бальмонт – Морозные узоры
- Song in the Manner of Housman poem – Ezra Pound poems
- Олег Бундур – Я не плачу
- A Prayer under the Pressure of Violent Anguish by Robert Burns
- Love Poem by Aditya Kumar
- In A Light Time by Philip Levine
- Life by Sir Walter Raleigh
- re_word by RD McManes
- Кастрюль и сковородок музыкант
- Владимир Маяковский – Новогодние поздравления (РОСТА №704)
- Ольга Берггольц – Знаю, чем меня пленила
- Николай Глазков – Что ни год, идёт вперёд
- The Valley Of Dry Bones poem – Ambrose Bierce poems | Poems and Poetry
Some external links:
Duckduckgo.com – the alternative in the US
Quant.com – a search engine from France, and also an alternative, at least for Europe
Yandex – the Russian search engine (it’s probably the best search engine for image searches).