I’m not Irish but I can identify at least

seven shades of green

from my perch on the porch

(even the air is green, which makes 8).

Church bells clang a little off-key

some forgotten hymn for the town

as dogs breathe 57 scents a second

through car windows as they loll on by.

A few gently rolling hills just beyond

homes and highways encircle my view

so it feels like I’m in a spoon about to be

dipped in a bowl of grass and trees.

It’s quiet in the middle

of breaking apart

like maybe the tearing

mutes the sound of angst

but the flowers are striking

with their beauty and

nothing can make the green

less than what it is in summer.

Hours of searching

for treatments

and my hair is still

unmanageable

white and old,

my shape is still full

round and soft,

my eyes are heavy

swollen and dark;

my mind is a wandering

mass of curiosity

with no promise

to be kept by any maker

other than the one

that gave me this body

-what a funny god

who allows ruin to be as

inevitable as beauty is fleeting.

The body I was in was called golden

with edges like driftwood,

smelling of caramel corn and sun,

looking like a shaggy butterfly

with a shaky wing.

I’ve stayed ragged

but processed and contained

like a koosh ball in a bubble gum machine.

My doctor had an old bag

and long beard. He was an impressionist

with a free-form modern sensibility

which made me feel like floating

in a murky pond

afraid of the depths, craving flight.

I sputter when I leave the hills, bits of

color left behind like a jet’s echo.

The shape of history

is a pile of love robed in stark beauty,

long grasses, and a touch of grief.

We become bakers or birds.