The Green Man in Spring: Some Reflections for Earth Day

Kuhwert
(CC BY-SA 3.0)

As many of you may know, today is Earth Day. Today we remember that the Earth, as Pope Francis has said, is our common home. She is, to borrow from St. Francis of Assisi, our sister and our mother, a fellow creature, yet one who sustains us. In honor of Earth Day, everyday for the next week I’ll be sharing a poem from a little collection I’m working on currently titled, The Green Man and Other Poems. At the end of the week, I’ll share in a single post a series of reflections I wrote on the Green Man during my Patheos days.

For those unfamiliar, the Green Man is a figure from English and broadly European folklore. Little is known about his origins, but his likeness, as in the image at the top of this post, is carved into a variety of churches from the Middle Ages. For me, the Green Man symbolizes our inherent relationship to the Earth through our Creator.

So without any further ado, here is my poem, “The Green Man in Spring.”

His leafy crown grows golden buds as Rain
Begins to fill her forest lover’s heart.
The weather warms and cools again and again,
Just as his heart is warmed and cooled in part.
When warming up, he reaches out his tendrils,
Digging deep and waking all the trees,
But in the cool, he sleeps and dreams of petals
Blossoming and falling into the sea.
And through the Sun, he sends his greening power
Into elm and oak and maple, rowan, birch.
He makes them pregnant at the proper hour.
Yet he cannot be found, no matter how hard we search.
He is the Green Man, and he was once our friend,
And we may yet know him, before the final end.