Green

Reciting Project in May: Green

Every May, when all the leaves return, I think about my love/hate relationship with green. In the past I’ve gathered a few poems by others about green. This year to become better acquainted with the poems, I’ve decided to memorize and then recite them on my run. 

May 7th-May 25th
Entries describing running while reciting green poems.

More Green, Later in the Summer

lines of green

Katie Farris

it’s all green, really; even the red is anti-green
The land spread itself greenly for me and I wished I had seed to toss into that green, just to see what would root.

Phillip Larkin

Their greenness is a kind of grief

Carl Phillips

green as water, the willow’s motion, green as oblivion, the willow’s indifference

Robert Frost

Nature’s first green is gold

Ada Limón

It’s the greening of the trees that really gets to me.
the green skin growing over whatever winter did to us

Emily Dickinson

The Color of the Grave is Green –The Outer Grave –  I mean – You would not know it from the Field –Except it own a Stone –

Gwendolyn Brooks

Graves grow no green that you can use. Remember, green’s your color. You are Spring.

Jericho Brown

I grow green with hope

Inspired by Rita Dove’s Ode to My Right Knee:

Ode to Green/ Sara Lynne Puotinen

Greedy gorge gobbler grifting
vistas. Vanishing views.
Overrunning overlooks. Orchestrating
take-overs–trees tressed,
scenes stolen, senses smothered. Stop.
Yield your yearly
domination. Dress down. Decide
against always
exuding excess.
Oh overabundant obstruction,
we want windows, ways
out, openings, other
perspectives, possibilities. Please
share some space. Surely
room remains
for faithful friends forever
craving crowd-less calm
where water waits, wants witnessing? Where
labored lungs longing
to take
bigger, bug-less breaths beside
river’s rim reach relief?

Or, in this form:

Greedy gorge gobbler grifting vistas. Vanishing views. Overrunning overlooks. Orchestrating take-overs–trees tressed, scenes stolen, senses smothered. Stop. Yield your yearly domination. Dress down. Decide against always exuding excess. Oh overabundant obstruction, we want windows, ways out, openings, other perspectives, possibilities. Please share some space. Surely room remains for faithful friends forever craving crowd-less calm where water waits, wants witnessing? Where labored lungs longing to take bigger, bug-less breaths beside river’s rim reach relief?

Or, in this form:

Greedy gorge gobbler grifting
vistas. Vanishing views.
Overrunning overlooks. Orchestrating

take-overs–trees tressed,
scenes stolen, senses smothered. Stop.
Yield your yearly

domination. Dress down. Decide
against always
exuding excess.

Oh overabundant obstruction,
we want windows, ways
out, openings, other

perspectives, possibilities. Please
share some space. Surely
room remains

for faithful friends forever
craving crowd-less calm
where water waits, wants witnessing, where

laboring lungs long
to take
bigger, bug-less breaths beside
river’s rim?

Which form works better?