Green World

If you knock on my chest, 
you’ll hear the hollow,
where I lay to rest on garden dreams.

You’ll hear grassy knolls like timpanies
& shimmering ponds like triangles.

You’ll hear that I am daily discovering 
treasures beneath my branches —
that dog and wolf surprise me still,
as do buttercup and swallow. 

On a sunshine glimmer day,
she flew in patterned descent 
to the meadow of my hollow,
on wings of wind chime chorus. 

Her eyes are green flecked-gold,
like a star got stuck in the forest

& it’s winking at me 
‘cause it likes to hide
under thrumming 
heartshade groves,
where it burrows in shadow
& flickers like fireflies. 

The day her green-forest eye turned from mine —
the day her finger-torch left my cheek —
the day her burnished-star banished —

Pompeii grew from the ground 
& erupted in my hollow.
It cast my knolls in igneous rock while  
ash fell like confetti at my funeral.