And quick he runs through my dreams, quick and grieving…
—Douglas LePan
His back turned away, head weighting untried hands
He stumbles into the empty clearing unseen
The frieze of undergrowth he’s skidded through dense and endless, lean
Torso shorn by low-waisted brambles and trailing bands
Of nettles shackled to the forest floor between stands
Of hickory and oak, his heart a gold finch his trellised ribs preen
His back turned away
From anyone who’s stripped him of his undershirt, the callow demands
Of his sylvan flesh unmet by tenderness, the routine
Silent ardor of the boreal stumping him, the sheen
Of his skin brackish, blistering as each arrowhead of poison ivy lands
His back turned away.
This poem “A Green Man” originally appeared in New Work on Early Canadian Literature. Spec. issue of Canadian Literature 213 (Summer 2012): 39-39.
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