Green Green Grass

In one of the classrooms I am observing for my teaching degree, the students are working on a poetry unit. As a fun activity to involve the college students observing, the English teacher involved us in a project where everyone in the class write a poem topic on a slip of paper, and the papers are drawn out of a hat. Whatever topic you draw, you must write a poem incorporating that theme. My topic is "Green Green Grass." Since I'm incapable of writing almost anything that isn't a dark perversion of theme, I of course wrote about... well. You'll see.

Green Green Grass

In England black is the color of mourning;
In Japan, they weep in white.
Standing in this green green grass
I know Montana's crepe is green.

In Appalachia there's an old wives' tale:
"Grass won't grow where blood was spilled."
They can not see this meadow
From the Appalachian Mountains.

A meadowlark is perched atop a
Green green stalk of prairie grass.
Beneath its cheerful song: the earth
Where the last of the bison fell.

A pronghorn nibbles tender shoots
Of green green grass and sage that
Was nourished by the devastation
Of smallbox, conflict, hunger.

The Little Bighorn Battlefield
Is halcyon, verdant, beautiful.
But here the peaceful rolling prairie
Is the color of pain and sorrow.

The rustling grass is whispering
A tale of cruelty and hate.
It parts revealing solemn stones
That reveal man's darkest deeds.

"Here lies a Cheyenne brave
who fell defending his people."
"Here lies a U.S. soldier
Who fell fulfilling his duty."

Yet I see a little Crow girl
With laughter like a birdsong
Playing in the green green grass
With a little white tourist boy.

And I think that green might also be
The color of hope.