‘The Green Giant’

Henry Vinicio Valerio Madriz is a teacher -English Teaching and Linguistics and Literature. Photography lover. He has published poems, short stories, and photographs, both online and print (in the USA, Canada, UK, India, Philippines, Pakistan, Germany, Palestine, Israel, and Nigeria). Shortlisted in Voice of Peace: 1st Intercontinental Poetry And Short Story Anthology 2021, The League of Poets. He got an ‘Honourable Mention’ in Dark Poets Prize II, 2024.

The Green Giant

River reeds growing in the desert,

A kind of sea change, miles from shore, 

This too was once an ocean bed.

Sleep now, fossilized protozoans

Suspended in amber and petroleum.

I would promise to protect you,

But we both know, if I had the choice,

I would gather you in buckets,

Like rain, like tears, like the milk

From a cow's teats in the morning,

I would sell you to a metal man.

I do this, knowing damn well

Only pistons and gears await you.

I'm sorry that I'm not sorry,

I need to feed my growing addiction

To roof over my head,

Expensive, the drug, 

More expensive, the withdrawals.

To stop the shaking and the sweating,

I want to lay down in the sand

Until it subsumes me;

More than that, 

I want an armful of dry straw,

A sturdy shovel, 

Saplings in little plastic pots. 

I want to be apart of the Great Green Wall,

To make something that exists only in roots and soil.

If I cannot be a part of the sea, the sea bed,

I want to be a part of the sea change.

C. S. Crowe is three crows in a trench coat that gained sentience after eating a magic bean. He spends his days writing stories on a stolen laptop and trading human teeth for peanuts. A poet and storyteller from the Southeastern United States, he believes stories and poems are about the journey, not the destination, and he loves those stories that wander in the wilderness for forty years before finding their way to the promised land.