Beset by Green

I sent this through e-mail, but I’m putting it here as well. Here will share and save. Wyllowisp wrote of green: "It tingles me!" I adore that line! And I find it true. And so I just had to share another green poem with you. It introduces my concept of Niap - which is pain backwards, in other words, an absence of pain. After a long search for a word that means "no pain" (without introducing the word pain into it, such as "pain-free") I gave up and turned the word backwards. Niap - the state of being NOT in pain.

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In a brief pain-stilled moment, beset by green:

Heavy and green, this well-being of brief duration, a moment of niap, concise, too short, but enough, to experience. Experience, as a thousand shades of green glisten the summer trees, polished malachite leaves turning front to back in a scintillating verdant choreography of gushing wind, soft as green glass against my skin. Niap is the inverse of pain, reverse, verse and chapter inside-out and backwards. Do not probe too deeply into niap, for there is, of course, pain somewhere and if sought, it will arise and spit and salver, but for the moment, it is not screaming. Its shrill ever-present throb of color-sucking nothing is ever so fleetingly still; and so the pathways of my perception pulse, briefly, palpably, full and flowing with green. The mountains are enchanting emerald undulations, pine trees looking soft as eiderdown, as feathers, as rose petals, as any blanket of jade cliché you might stroke with fingertips, shocking sweet sensual awareness discovered by the absence of that which is not to be searched for. I swallow this short shot of summer sweet, as summer once was forever, when it bloomed an eternal patina of warmth; lazy and still. A creation where the world smelled of nothing so much as green; green in my eyes, my breath, my mouth; tongue tasting childhood, tasting memories of buttery sun on warm brown skin and bare feet on dew damp grass; clover-colored shamrock grass, succulent with caressing cool chlorophyl. A scarce, pain-free breathing space as tranquil as turquoise twilights when the canyon wind swam cucumber crisp through the backyard with the tang of tart apple-green and a menthol mist of mint. In this drifting moment of indrawn breath, I remember a bed among the daisies, laying on my back, the ceaseless sound of home, wet in my ears; sluicing downhill, streaming crystal singing liquid songs over slick jade moss, water splashing toward the fields below in a rush of yearning to create, to feast, to become - green. Above my summerdrunk emerald eyes the sky drifted past forever overhead; a canvas of lapis lazuli, painted with wide, sweeping strokes of tree; shivering, shimmering, honied breath of life; aware, awake, and green, of green. Of green.


©Edwina Peterson Cross