The greens are brighter somehow. The grass
not grass but a speaker for soundscapes,

yard songs like forcefields, pulsing
with peace and purpose, sermon-like,

the way cool air fills the lungs
with both rest and waking. Every day

is today if one considers physics. Or
think instead in terms of reflectance curves.

Yes, today is glowing green, hedge-like,
untrimmed because it’s a wild hedge

without ties to property or pension, waving
in the wind like ceremony, like couplets

printed on glassine paper
then gently placed atop pool water,

which is to say, we are outside again:
the mating song of crickets

bowing wings with wings, an orchestral movement
under the guise of question, wondering

if today is actually today, as in
the moment one thinks of as now. Nevertheless,

time goes on with its many shades of green—
lime and pickle and pear—and so many sounds:

crickets and cicadas, the buzzing of bees,
but man-made things too: motors, machines

of all types. One could call it a symphony
if they were kind, but the world is never kind.

A cricket dies of old age after ten weeks.
The earth swallows everything.

A hideous, hungry caterpillar the earth is, until again
it is leafy and green, blissful in its budding.

Time passes and then it’s the sun’s turn to swallow.
More time and then there is something else.

A cosmic flower, dark with pull. A black hole
that never covers its mouth when it yawns.

 

Adam Gianforcaro is a writer living in Wilmington, Delaware. His poems and stories can be found in Poet Lore, Third Coast, RHINO, Bending Genres, HAD, Maudlin House, and elsewhere.