Viridescent, and: Descender

Viridescent

Of an emerald blur I could distinguish no sensesave names and purposes.Wolf’s foot, stag’s horn, running pine,whose spores are flash-explosive.Fiddleheads, ash for forest glass.Resurrection fern, one hundred years without water.Sand cedar, from which bows could be bent.Live oak, curved for shipbuilding.Black mangrove, black in its heart, that extruded salt.White ash, from which one could cut a staff or a bat.Rum cherry, cabinets of which intoxicated their contents.False box, the butcher’s block.Devil stick, of universal use, the angelica tree.Witch hazel, diviner of water.Black nightshade, killer of children.Even the leaves of bastard indigo and wood violet: green.Like grass or emeralds, viridescent.Artichoke, asparagus, avocado.Dark green is dark green.Hooker’s green, laurel green.Light green is light green.Myrtle, mint, pine.(Not teal, nothing is teal.)Olive.Celadon, hunter, copper.Verdigris.Because it was green it was grassand because it was grass it grew.

Descender

From five thousand feet, the island:a model city, rivulets of steel, it aspires.

The model of the city is not a surfaceon which you would want to fall.

But if you fall far enough you fall between:rivulets into rivers, spires into stones.

At this scale you do not even knowthat the island is an island. It is land.

Solid as rock though porous, rivenwith tunnels, each hole atrial.

A mile beneath the city is no longerthe city’s henge, but the city’s chamber.

From here the city’s a single stone,its room hidden as a pock in marble.

In the room off the alley under the islandin the river: a bed and a dresser, a mirror.

A nightstand and papers, a paperweightheavy enough to satisfy the hand.

Its shape a broken cube, steeplejacked.Serrated to spikes and steel. This city.