"Pure Green" by Alexander Etheridge

I walk further into myself---inside a waking

dream, I walk further into dark.

All at once the trees and sky here change,

becoming ten thousand years ago,

and I’m suddenly by a cold stream in this

immensely old, and immediately

present November. If I return to my world now

I’d be, in a way, centuries old.

Either I’m falling deeper into dreaming,

or the dream is overtaking the world.

I’m in a pure green place,

and rain falls through mist, echoing

in my bones. I was born into

these tiny sounds of growing stems.

The darkness here is filled with light, and led by

the mind of light. This dark shines

in a season of paradise, the first moment

of truth in the last moment

of my lost and blind wandering.

Without knowing it I’ve always walked toward

the stars of this other world,

toward the mountains and snows

of its living fable.

Alexander Etheridge has been developing his poems and translations since 1998. His poems have been featured in Wilderness House Literary Review, Cerasus Journal, The Cafe Review, The Madrigal, Abridged Magazine, Susurrus Magazine, The Journal, and many others. He was the winner of the Struck Match Poetry Prize in 1999.