Summer Solstice/Father’s Day—New Murfin Poetry for the Occasion

The Green Man.

Regular readers are aware of my inexplicable habit of composing poetry based on random coincidences of the calendar.  I have done it again.   Here is the incriminating evidence.

Summer Solstice/Father’s Day

June 21, 2015

Perhaps, after all, I am the Green Man,

          and my Father before me

                   who took to the woods with rod and rifle

          and his father before him

                   who grew strawberries by the porch

          and the fathers before  him

                   who were orchardmen in Ohio

          and way back those earlier yet

                   who pulled stones from Yorkshire fields

                   for their masters.

Save the complexion, I look the part enough

          with my shaggy goatee, wild eyebrows,

                   and neglected hair which could sprout

                   oak and ivy.

But my wild forest years are well behind me,

          I plant nothing but my feet on the sidewalk

                   and my ass in a desk chair,

          I raise nothing but questions, concerns,

                   and indignation,

          my fertility was snipped away

                   long decades past

          my virility—don’t make me laugh,

                    no Goddess  awaits in a glade

                   under the triumphant Sun.

Perhaps I am not the Green Man after all

          just an old fool and fraud,

          but, hey, isn’t that all that is needed

          to be just Dad instead.

—Patrick Murfin