Green
Recently I was approached by Michigan poet Robb Astor to provide a musical background for his written in Tanzania poem “Green”, here’s what we came up with:
green, how green
leaves of banana trees
fields
where crowned cranes danced
fields how yellow
dabs of yellow dappled fields
of african daisies
fireflies green with light
in darkness
shone stars i did not know
had never seen
rigel kentaurus
canopus
aldeberon
how we lay those nights
beneath the stars
show me you said
the southern cross
lost in interstices
of sky above the alleys
a green dress
satin shining in the shop window
your eyes in the glass
beneath old electric speakers
wired in the heights of marinets
the fullness of your hair eclipsing
clouds of magellan
how you danced
in midnight streets humming
that sappy bollywood music
the silhouette of you
beneath the screen and me
but oh how far from green i’ve wandered
how far
alcor
mizar
how cloudy my vision
all things colored
even the black mold
clinging to white stone
ruins where i used to sit
in forlorn grasses
drawing doorways in time-worn walls