Recently I was approached by Michigan poet Robb Astor to provide a musical background for his written in Tanzania poem “Green”, here’s what we came up with:

 

green, how green

leaves of banana trees

fields

where crowned cranes danced

fields how yellow

dabs of yellow dappled fields

of african daisies

fireflies green with light

 

in darkness

shone stars i did not know

had never seen

rigel kentaurus

canopus

aldeberon

how we lay those nights

beneath the stars

show me you said

the southern cross

lost in interstices

of sky above the alleys

 

a green dress

satin shining in the shop window

your eyes in the glass

beneath old electric speakers

wired in the heights of marinets

the fullness of your hair eclipsing

clouds of magellan

 

how you danced

in midnight streets humming

that sappy bollywood music

the silhouette of you

beneath the screen and me

but oh how far from green i’ve wandered

 

how far

alcor

mizar

how cloudy my vision

all things colored

even the black mold

clinging to white stone

ruins where i used to sit

in forlorn grasses

drawing doorways in time-worn walls