Grass sings to her roots
red and yellow and pink and green Ð
It thinks, man, these are the colours
of air and water, of light and freeing,
but before this they were ours:
our blades are green, our lowly stems
the red of poppies, pink of damask,
our rhizomes white as exemption.
And you, my loves, are palest yellow
like the long memory of sunlight
from a rainbow on a glacial floe.
Published in Staple Magazine,
69/70, Summer/Autumn 2008