Green pushes up in deep profusion
each August, consecrated, venerable,
as August by definition is,
surrounds, pervades, leans, bows as if
in prayer, while white, indigo hydrangea,
its chapel cap, yarmulka and cones
leave us bloom struck
such profusion one almost expects
Costa Rican jungle creatures,
but this is Pennsylvania
and suburban tracts erase
all things wild,
yet, even this house is green,
even from the hilltop cliff
one can barely see the town
so bathed in green
as tiny splashes of violet blooms
spring from butterfly bushes
and host a couple of honeybees,
poignant reminder of the scarcity
of their species, a sole monarch.
Are the birds not visible today
because of such heat, such rain?
I stand barefoot on this ground
imagining the other side of Earth,
St. Petersburg, Kyiv, Gaza, Afghanistan,
and here too, as humans unleash wars
against children,
against the aged,
against seas, lands,
the winged and the crawling,
religious wars they say,
spiritual warfare,
as if this Earth were not worthy
enough a home .
—
Judith A. Kennedy lives along the Susquehanna River in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. She has two books of poetry, To See in the Night and Salted Wakings. Her poem, “Longfellow Pine” will appear in the forthcoming anthology, Keystone Poetry: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania through Penn State University Press in May 2025.
