His Favorite Color Is Green

All shades all permutations
of say the shiny glabrous stem
of a shooting-out-from-winter daffodil
of Astroturf like just-before-blooming phlox

the long-&-narrow-little-or-large-town street sign
the big square Missoula Sioux City Throgsneck Bridge
along the freeway with horsetail astragalus vetch

the Libyan flag whipping over one point oh
three percent arable land
shimmer of mallard’s head

or lighter . . . the under-ripe fruit
he does his best to enjoy
olivaceousness of kinglets
mama calliope warming her eggs
those clusters that fall in April or May
from Norway maples onto sidewalks
we stroller past
custard of scooped out avocado

or dark as say its skin . . . seaweed hemlock
dinosaur kale . . . picnic tables of city parks

The vegetables he hates
The garbage trucks he loves

The semi-spicate the glume-ful the spikelike the membranous
The shallowly bifid the twisted the sticky the hollow
The most common & palatable known
from near Corvallis from near Boise
Whorlwort Beckmannia False Brome

His world’s frondy
Maidenhair gone haywire
His world’s licorice wet (also deer & lady)
His world’s hickory buckeye slippery elm

I kneel to find him something emerald
something emerald & squiggly

I hardly knew him that first spring he fit in a playground swing
ratcheting a metal bar along a chain
down & down till it fit

So much of his world so much of this world
even where plowed where fires even in cities
a hispid persistence

I wanted him to come along but he wouldn’t
I wanted him to hurry
I needed to tell him what Horace said
about the goddess Envy
(“leave no offerings”)

Piles of clippings giant piles of invasive ivy
the neighbor’s ghost-shaped shrubs harmless giants
while he sings his crocodile song