Green Season

annihilating all that’s made/to a green thought in a green shade. – Andrew Marvell, “The Garden”

It is the greening of the year,
green season
when bare limbs no longer
are budded in winter’s blackbirds
but in leaves unfurling
like the folds of a young girl’s
green skirt around her pale
fresh legs, green so brilliant
it reflects sunlight
like a landscape of mirrors,
hurts the eyes, smothers windows,
trembles in the breeze like a butterfly’s
wings testing first flight. It is a green
that turns the dogwood blinding,
the azure sky searing, and gleams
through pollen yellow and thick
as butter. It is the green of birth
and imagination, reflection and
annihilation of all that has gone
before–hope in the first brush
of hands, passion in the waking
moments of morning, dreams that
turn like autumn leaves. It is
the green of a clover patch where
one violet wood sorrel sways,
thinking of nothing.

(c) Rosemary McMahan