Saturday Poem

For all the Wet Green Girls
Lew Welch

I found myself, green girls, in a month like May
in a green green garden at the break of day

all around me gray rain beat
and the cage that I am was an empty zoo

In a garden, girls, at a break like May
in the first wet light of the sun

when, from a rock in the arbor leapt
a sleeping cat, through

gray green cages of deserted zoo
where I found myself on a breaking day

as bright rain beat upon the garden stone
where the leapt cat left his belly print

alone, young girls, when my head unbent
in a green green garden at the break of day

and I saw what came
and I watched what went

Green Girls

from; Ring of Bone, Collected Poems 1950-1971;
Grey Fox Press