The Book of the Green

The sun is again in the green, a book on the grass. The open page, I can’t read.

Hot breaths on noon, cloud shadows slip away, A squirrel moves in the sweet dew — I’m patient as a tree.

In the whispers of willows, the sound of paper, crumpling like a voice, bending like the embrace of leaves.

There is no voice to echo my name, with only the wind, who is warbling it, and playing it on—a scribe of the earth.

• Lorine Niedecker