The Greening Heart
by Sonia Di Placido
after Hildegard
The whiter roots gleam. Their vessels
orbit the ground, greening virtuous sprouts.
She’s indexed the ‘Green finger of God’*
to Glory—a light in spaces or places.
Those aces between words and worlds, sounding
to Sappho’s lyre: “I am greener than grass…”
“Viriditas Gloriosa,” she, a foundling, chants theorems
in her virile garden. And when it rains water with acid tears,
She cries a prayer to the Greener—listens for leafy openings
to her Ordo Virtutum when she writes, “Let’s not call it poison
but a metallurgical decay—a chlorophyll florescence”.
*Hildegard of Bingen (1089-1179) adopted in her writings, ‘The Green Finger of God,’ a widely held belief that a healthy green surrounding meant balance and stability. Her notion of too much green or not enough green suggested an excess or a lack of vitality: a notion which she applied growing herbs in her exceptional healing garden.
