The green man leafy head in hands comes back again & again:
I remember Billy, the son, scapegoat, burdened with the life he found:

cirrhotic, bleeding out his esophagus, finally in hepatic coma,
"swimming up" to his eyes from within to observe bleak cartoon

figures going through motions in the room beyond--saved only
because when others bardo-prayed he'd go to the light, his father

drove them away--"Dammit, he's in a fucking coma and he might listen!"
Billy--who in the end "bid all trees & true persons the clearest of futures."

Greek warriors lean together, flowing beards lovely curling hair, fierce eyes
intent on the battle to come, another battle. Sappho lamented such beauty

one sees in faces like these, marching to war, full of high phrases, valorous
tongues, arms bristling with arms, killers with the faces of angels--Sappho,

who cried out to Anaktoria that her footstep, the light in her eyes set her
heart thrumming more strongly than all armed killers others might sing.

spirits trapped in the squalor of watches & traffic, appointments, brief
cases loaded with the flotsam of routine--imagine him now, naked

to the world, human form at last a swinger in heights above, godlike,
filled as a boy is filled to be a man, to green as an earth in season.