H. C. Palmer
Green Man in an Artillery Crater

These old craters in northeastern Crimea,
blown-out by artillery rounds, lie empty.
Dead earth, so it seems, following the first
firings from Russia’s big-gun-invasion in 2015.
Then, came eight years of rain and freeze
and swirling winds that wore these plowed
furrows smooth. One-hundred hectares
of fertile land lie pocked, unplanted and deserted.
Braving death from an unexploded round,
we step lightly, until, on the berm of the largest crater,
we stand side-by-side and stare. Face-up,
on the crater’s floor, is the figure of a man.
His outline, leafy green. Vines form his body.
His two legs and right arm are a tangle of limbs
and leaves. We slide over the berm and down
the crater’s crumbling wall for a closer look.
The man’s eyes focus on our approach. Leaves
of oak, as old as the man himself, conceal his mouth
and chin, as if we are to know what he would say.
Around his neck, a delicate vine holds an acorn
amulet. Until this moment, the growth at his chin
has concealed his left hand, its veins clearly born
of branching vines. See the clarity in his eyes?
See his fingers stroke his mustache, as if to say,
Don’t you know? There is new life from compost.
Some call it a resurrection.