Green Face

Green Face

Digger rumbles
Chainsaw whines

In the pines
Above Deep Song

As I hide
& seek
The Green faced one

Whose apparition cannot be contrived
& who I desperately need

Following the temporary repairs
To Battery Bridge

& the wild dance of Hunter’s Creek
Cutting through bedrock

Taking advantage of the stupidity
Of my neighbour

Who riddles his pine plantation
With dirt bike tracks

Which turn into hydroslides

Transporting rotten rock
& skidsite tailings

To block the bridge
& shred the road

While on the internet
Climate scientists describe

Atmospheric rivers

Deepening and widening
As the planet declines

Slamming, winter by winter
Into the West Coast

& by extension

My fragile cottage
Perched on the edge of the Richmond
Forest Wilderness

Where I pause to notice
How it’s always in the particular

In this poem, this cabin
This grandson
This granddaughter

That the Green face appears
Because she’s never abstract

But lingers slow

Peering into each unique face
Feeling with
& for us –

& I’m feeling ok
Though I know there’re no guarantees
In the rain or the trees

Where her presence it frees

For she’s
Our Lady of this poem
& no other poem

& she does
What she please

.

Inspired by the saying; ‘Our Lady of this poem’ which gives the sense that ‘Our Lady of Poetry’ i.e the Sacred Feminine who inspires poetry and incarnates uniquely in every poem she chooses to inhabit.

‘The Green faced one;’ the Sacred Feminine, Our Lady of Nature, Our Lady of the Particular

Written after being cut off by flooding which cut Wakamarina Road 400 meters below where I live (for the second time in four years). The flood originated on my neighbour’s pine plantation situated above where I live. The flooding is likely to become a regular occurrence because of man-made changes to the hill, including; a culvert, plantation roading and dirt bike tracks. According to climate scientists, global warming is likely to increase the power and amount of flooding caused by the swollen atmospheric rivers hitting the West Coast (and Marlborough) regions of Aotearoa.

 ‘Deep Song;’ the name of my cottage