Green Men

by Bill Lewis

Green men grin and gurn

from blackened beams

that creak and groan

as ancient houses dream

and are swayed by

wind in branches

long since snapped.

Foliate faces flower and the

memory of an antique hour

unwinds beneath

a carpenter's craft;

masons, too, saw their shape

sleeping in the stone.

So all is forest then,

vegetable, mineral, flesh, bone.

The world tree becomes

the column of my spine;

eyelids leaves of oak;

fingers ash and pine.

I am lost within a wood

that is lost within me.

Green men grin and gurn,

for no one knows more than they

what is and is not tree.