Perverse Pleasure

Green Night By Edward Hirsch Issue no. 182 (Fall 2007) (Summer, 1982) We walked down the path to breakfast. The morning swung open like an iron gate. We sat in Adirondack chairs and argued for hours about the self—it wasn't personal— and the nature of nature, the broken Word, the verse of God in fragments. We trotted back and forth to readings. The trees were the greenest I had ever seen. We cut bread from a large brown loaf at a long wooden table in the mountains. A farmer hayed the meadows and the afternoon flared around us. Pass the smoky flask. Pass the cigarettes: twenty smouldering friends in a package. We swam in the muddy pond at dusk. The sky was a purple I had never seen. Someone was always hungover, Scheming with rhymes, hanging out. Nothing could quench our thirst for each other. At the bonfire, we flamed with words. The houses were named after trees. I slept with someone at the top of a maple. It was a green night to be a poet in those days. We didn't care if the country didn't care about us. Image: Pinterest