Purple Hazel Green

Original Poetry, Music, and Essays

inspired by the big questions and the stunning mysteries of All That Is

Category: Poetry

  • A Future Beyond the Rubble

    A Future Beyond the Rubble

    for Taqwa Ahmed Al-Wawi

    Who am I sitting here
    hoping for change
    blogging my feelings
    posting my anger
    carrying my sign
    to the protest rally?

    Activist? 
    I think not. 

    Who am I
    listening to the bad, bad news
    imagining, re-posting
    a poem
    an article
    about someone else’s horrific reality?

    Witness?
    I think not.

    Who am I 
    sitting here in on my bed
    getting texts from a poet in Gaza
    who has not yet lived 2 decades
    who has seen more death already
    than I will ever see?

    Poet?
    I like to think.

    Who am I
    writing encouraging lines to her
    about poetry and language
    when she is living on drops of water
    sleepless from the incessant noise
    of genocide?

    Lifeline?
    Perhaps

    What to say? 
    What to ask?

    Are you okay? 
    What is okay?

    Are you safe?
    There is no safe place.

    Are you alive?
    Every message is asking that.

    Are my carefully chosen words over Whatsapp
    coming to you in a moment when you are 
    fleeing for your life?
    fighting to get food?
    struggling to think your next thought?
    helping someone else to survive?

    Are there moments when you laugh?
    Is a fleeting joy ever possible?
    I want to ask, but I’m ashamed
    of my ignorance, of my privilege
    sitting here
    on my bed
    sobbing
    ranting
    raging
    as if I had a right to

    I want you to live 
    to be the great poet of Palestine
    I already know you to be

    You want a future
    beyond the rubble
    over which it may be impossible to see

    Still, you do see
    Walking through it, you reach 
    beyond the darkness 
    toward what you see

    Because of that
    here I am 
    A random American who had her radio on in the car at just 				exactly the right time 
    sitting on my bed 
    halfway across the world 
    knowing your name
    hearing your voice

    sharing with you 
    through lines of poetry
    your grief 
    	which must be shared
    your vision
    	which inspires the courage to fight for it
    and these precious moments
    	which we won’t forget

                            — Purple Hazel Green
                                 Aug-Sept. 2025

    TAQWA AHMED AL-WAWI is a 19-year old student, writer, and poet writing from Gaza “to amplify Gaza’s voice and shed light on stories that are often left untold.” The title of this poem was taken from words Taqwa wrote about her life. Her deeply sensitive poetry and vivid reports of her life and the lives of those around her can be found here:

    https://tqwaportfolio-project.netlify.app/

  • Because You Keep Asking

    Because You Keep Asking

    for V.O.G. and all those who are asking

    The cosmos is within us. 
    We are made of star-stuff. 
    We are a way for the universe to know itself.

    			— Carl Sagan
    What if now, 
    	after you have run all your marathons
    	after doing all the world-shaping
    	all the emotional life-changing
    	all the mental heavy-lifting
    	you are going to do

    — because, it seems, the time for all that is behind you…

    What if the reason you are still here
    now
    	in the far reaches of age
    	in the enfrailing body
    	in the encroaching vulnerability 
    	in the slipperiness of forgetting
    is to witness?

    Witness 
    what only you can witness
    	from the far reaches of experience
    	from the far reaches of the self 
    	you have come to know yourself to be

    And to feel
    that which is being witnessed
    in a way that
    no one else who is here
    now
    on Earth
    can

    To witness
    Not just to witness
    No, this is no small thing, to witness
    	beloveds dying
    	civil society unraveling
    	greed threatening biodiversity 
    	insanity threatening planetary survival
    No, this is not some softened way to pass the time
    It requires a level of grounded tenacity not everyone has managed to attain
    	
    What if the reason you are here
    is not about what hoops you can still jump through
    	or what you are capable of
    	or whether fire fills your belly
    	or about you at all? 
    (Nothing personal) 

    What if every thought and feeling you have 
    	regardless of whether you
    	write it in a poem
    	say it out loud
    	tell a soul
    	or even remember it
    is critically important to the edification of the universe?

    in the way you encounter each changing moment
    in the way your skin feels
    in the way your belly vibrates
    in the way your heart aches
    in the way your mind is constantly, silently, unconsciously
    exchanging information 
    with things invisible and mysterious

    in perfect timing
    		with the Grand Symphony 
    						of All That Is

    What if the universe desperately needs 
    what only those few 
    who have reached this rarified space that you occupy
    can provide?

    You may have noticed that many of us are otherwise distracted
    running our marathons
    	with technology
    	with politics
    	with success and failure
    	with flashy, shiny things
    	with loud, fast things
    	with sexy, vacant things
    And you think your capacities are limited?!

    Yesterday we were talking about how one word can change so much meaning:

    Why am I here?
    Why am I still here? 

    I’m just here
    I’m here

    This is no becoming insignificant
    This is no diminishment
    This is seeing
    	feeling
    	grieving
    	raging
    This is loneliness
    	sadness
    	confusion
    	understanding 
    	astonishment 
    	ineffable love
    	ineffable pain
    	revelation
    	gratitude

    What if you don’t need to write another poem
    because you are now
    the poem?

    				— Purple Hazel Green
    			        Summer Solstice 2025

  • Birth Canal

    Birth Canal

    I come from the forest,
    from the Mother Tree,
    who grew from the misty center
    of this tree cathedral
    who gradually became the soil.

    I come from the soil—
    chips of wood and mineral grains—
    catching moisture
    and feeding the roots
    of this tree circle

    I come from the mountains
    from the wind that blows over them
    from the streams that cut through them
    and the rocks that tumble from them

    I come from the ages tumbling
    from mountain to river to sea

    I come from the salty sea

    I come from a time I cannot remember
    I come from forms I cannot remember
    I come from all time and all forms—
    fire and ocean, mountain and tree,
    prayer and chaos and grace.

    — Purple Hazel Green

    2004

    Mweelra Mountain, Cnoc Maol Réidh, County Mayo, Ireland

  • Fire and Ice

    Fire and Ice

    Audio of this poem read by the author with original soundtrack using Susan Alexjander‘s “Elements of Tone” – analog tones of the basic elements of life: H, He, O2, Ca, N, P, S, Si

    Fire and Ice

    How can space be so cold
    that a comet moving hundreds of thousands
    of miles per hour,
    has a tail of ice?
    And so hot
    that stars burn white
    for thousands of millions of years?

    Don’t.  I’m waiting for the sky to answer.

    Be patient if I forget my dreams.
    My reception is filled with static.
    It’s never quiet when I sleep.
    Never calm once I’m awake.
    I want to do all things in a sacred manner,
    but I’m on a tight schedule.

    Ghosts walk the streets, I’ve heard.
    I can’t see them.  I’m still blind with stories
    of what’s invisible.
    But I sing to them anyway,
    trying to coax open a portal
    they can climb through
    and go home.

    How can a world be so crowded
    and feel so desolate?
    I have always taken anonymity for granted.
    It startled me one day when
    someone heard me, sang back
    a tune they could only have heard me sing.
    I ran away, not knowing what to do
    with so much intimacy.
    Scared of mirrors.

    Someone told me the Ancestors
    are not encumbered by the prejudices
    they shouldered on their human journey.
    To them, I am Briget’s daughter,
    a healer, a poet, a tender of fire.
    Sometime before I got here
    I qualified for the position.

    Must we wait till death to see
    each other that way?
    The loud mouth on the bus is Jupiter.
    Take some of that with you
    and the meeting you thought you were late for
    won’t start on time. 

    Adversity cannot dwell amidst beauty.
    Adorn the altar of your Self with flowers,
    and it will leave
    to find a more hospitable environment.
    Stop taking everything so personally.
    Haven’t you noticed that every smile
    is bigger than the face making it?

    — Purple Hazel Green
    2007

  • Keeping Watch

    Keeping Watch

    When beauty lets loose in the wake of a sound
    and lifts her heels into turns –
    what emerges?

    I heard the wind
    and looked for trees.


    Smelled pine,
    looked for needles.


    Saw the dogs sniffing the ground,
    looked up

    saw a Great Horned Owl
    Felt pain


    remembering its mate died last Spring.
    Remembered Spring,


    took a breath of Summer,
    and gave reverence to the passing of Time.

    Am I doing enough?  Am I catching all the signs?
    Am I doing too much?  Am I being present?
    What is happening now?  What time is it?
    What is emerging?

    — 2011

  • In Flux

    In Flux

    There is no still point.
    Just when you think you are
    still
    you feel
    how everything
    is moving

    through the watery currents.
    Even the shore,
    fixed and solid,
    is slowly transformed
    by the waters.

    There is no still point—
    only miracles
    of movement everywhere—

    Those worn out palm fronds
    woven into grandmother’s basket
    once waved wildly
    in warm tropical storms.

    That car
    churns ancient liquid earth
    into speed, noise, atmosphere,

    One breath,
    a galaxy of molecules
    every three seconds.

    Pollen flying, uncles dying,
    that butterfly
    is a dead caterpillar.

    At the still point
    there is grace and violence—
    a fireworks display
    with no grand finale.

    Everything happening
    is grand,
    every unique moment
    final.

    — May 2000

  • Prayer to an Unknown Myth

    Prayer to an Unknown Myth

    Great Well between the earth and sky,
    give us a new myth –
    one we can paint and sing about,
    dance and dream about;
    one to tell to children,
    so that they may dream of the past
    in the future.

    The old ones have gone stale.
    We are starved
    chewing on litanies
    long since emptied of their nourishment

    We have named the elements
    and put them to use –
    abandoning wonder,
    forgetting the source.

    Air, Water, Earth, Fire –
    How will we be remembered?
    What lies under the crusty rocks
    still to be turned?
    What myth will be left standing?
    How many have been lost forever?

    Give us only the raw materials
    to make life out of death;
    the tools to find joy where there is fear.
    The rest we may leave behind.

    The ground is fresh –
    up from the seas it came, with the tide,
    with new life,
    and new mysteries.

    Life!  What else is there for us?
    If we could see behind the screen of the gods,
    perhaps we’d know more.  But for now –
    we breathe, we love, we grieve.

    Let us cherish life like a short growing season,
    Notice the everyday changes.
    Look for the buds.
    Harvest when the moon is right.

    Let us gather our stories
    and spread them like the seeds of a new season.
    Dance, dream, pray for water.

    1996

  • Infinite Finiteness

    Infinite Finiteness

    or
    For the Sake of Argument I’ll say God

    I know something about God.
    So do you.  And now
    we know something neither of us knew
    until, and because, we met.
    One time, or many times, when we might have

            listened to each other

    tell the stories that wanted to be told
    in that particular moment.
    A transmission happened,
    though we would not have called it that.
    We might have been doing the dishes,
    our hands in the water,
    reading pages out loud to each other from our
    Books of What God Is.

    And what that old, old Redwood knows of God – the music
    that has been recorded of her long, slow dance
    in her Book of What God Is…
    If I lean into her body, sink in until we can

            listen to each other,

    surrender
    my story in exchange for
    what small portion of hers
    she may be able to impart
    to one so new –
    I may receive one page, perhaps, from her Book

    that I can then add to all that I know
    about God
    so far.
    And maybe one day, I open my book to that page –
    just out of the blue, or so it would seem,
    and that page begets a new page
    called a poem –
    conceived in a conjugal union of
    Past and Present –
    about a redwood tree
    and cycles of life,
    one of many that fill the Book of What God Is.

    Yes, if we could lean in and

            listen to each other

    like we can with a Tree,
    or the Wind, or the Ocean
    receive each page with love,
    knowing that we’re learning still more of what God is.

    We’re all reporters for the Book of What God is
    writing and reading
    ad infinitum
    “All the news without fear or favor.”

    So, let’s say that poem I write gets read,
    to a haphazard gathering of strangers and friends,

    and one, whom I may not even know,
    finds a thread in the poem
    which leads to some overgrown, tangled place
    in her heart. Somewhat dazed, she stares
    out a window
    she looks through every day,
    but only now
    sees
    that old Valley Oak, so stalwart and reaching

    out like the shelter of mothering arms. She goes outside, for she hears the tree
    calling her, knows
    that in this moment they can

             listen to each other.

    As she opens her Book to put in this page
    a hundred pages spill out,
    and flow past her eyes
    like a river. She weeps,
    tasting the tears in her Book of What God is –
    the pages she’d tucked away and forgotten.
    She weeps,
    and all of them sing themselves back to her.

    She weeps
    for things she didn’t know needed weeping.
    She writes a new page with
    her grief, in moans, and her praise
    in crazed laughter –
    the kind that only comes after the prisoner
    is set unexpectedly free.

    Those sounds heaving up from her heart
    write a crystalline code
    into each teardrop falling
    from her face to the earth.
    And the billions of organisms
    who live in the soil
    made moist by her tears
    receive this transmission – each of them
    has a new page for their Book of What God Is.
    And they tell their stories to countless others;
    the tree receives her story and theirs,
    multiple versions of this one multifaceted moment of God.

    The pages swell.

    Sparrows, ravens, hearing her cries
    write their pages.
    The evening sun, glancing over one shoulder,
    casts a moment
    that the Earth herself writes into the Book –
    a moment filled with infinite moments
    of beauty and surrender,
    pages within pages,
    stories within stories
    making One glorious infinite Story.

    God
    is reading and writing,
    reading and writing,
    reading and writing:
    I am that.
    I am that.
    I am that.
    I am.

     

    by Purple Hazel Green
    for Marleen, and everyone else
    September 6, 2015

  • Mellifluous

    Mellifluous

    Music flows like honey
    Through the universe

    Sweet sound –
    nectar to the One
    who longs to hear it

    A star burns
    through all its elements
    to the densest – iron
    before exploding

    We can hear that ringing –
    the death of Grandmother Supernova
    giving birth to a sun

    Sacred bells ring out
    all over the Earth
    in Her memory

    Our memory
    is nothing but
    Her

    Bees drone and make honey
    Humans make bells and drums
    flutes and words

    We taste honey,
    say, “Mmmm”
    Stardust rings in our ears

    The Queen of Heaven
    hears Herself at last
    She is harmony
    She is Om


    Words and Music by Purple Hazel Green. 

    Share freely and with love. Download here for free:

  • Three Spirals

    Three Spirals

    I am the motion of the universe
    – curling through the dark
    and starry spirals of the night.
    While the Milky Way seems far above me,
    I am swimming in her fiery waves of light 

    I am the vitality of the sun
    –curling streams of light
    breathing, tasting, touching, seeing
    multi-colored grains.
    I say, “The sun is in my eyes.”

    I am love emitting love –
    unable to contain myself
    I am the pinpoint of creation
    on a journey into dreams.
    Curling up with my beloved,
    I say, “The moon is rising.”