Green Man

read by kate bernadette benedict

. . . with your green twill shirt
and your greenleaf emblem,
green pail, green tools, green thumb
when I rummage for evidence of the humane around here,
you turn up, with your loamy hands.

How mildly you minister to the ficus, the pothos,
the potted ivy in its unsupported sprawl.
Desk to desk, you walk your stations,
crimping and pruning,
probing, fluffing,
and humming, it seems, a hymn to Mother Ceres.

Now you take the pulse of my languishing fern,
watering it faithfully, misting its green hair.
I feel my own pulse slowing
as it does in languor
as it might in prayer
if I spent my days as you spend yours,
fostering the green potential of things.

Profit is what I cultivate
in this green building of hermetic glass,
grave and perpendicular,
with the perfect symmetry of the crystal
and a crystal’s fine sterility.
Yet your plants thrive
in the hothouse brilliance of the place
and freshen our desiccated air.

And you, green man, with your green garb
and your green touch
and your indispensable green skills
are always welcome here.
We bean-counting bankers happily pay your bills.

Kate Bernadette Benedict, of New York City, is the author of the full-length poetry collection Here from Away and the editor of two online poetry journals, Umbrella and Tilt-a-Whirl.