All the lore about the season, spread out
on the forest floor, spring on the verge
of arriving above in the old oaks
and maples shoehorned in among the pines,
but here below, crawling up and out
from layers of pine needle rust and leaf-rot:
ferns, fiddleheads, mayflowers, whatever
creeps—all grasping light, as much as they can
before the canopy fills in. This under-
story where spring’s exploding at the core
of low-lying plants, energy from the sun’s
red and blue bands, only the radiant ends
of the spectrum, my field guide says, being
absorbed, never the middle rays, that is,
never the green. But how even begin
to see green that way—this trailing array,
liquid gushing, lush with longing, oh so much
green upon green as merely reflection
of what’s not taken in, what’s always missing?

Moira Linehan’s If No Moon was published in 2007. Her poem is reprinted from that collection by permission of Southern Illinois University Press. © 2007 by Moira Linehan.