Dean Poling: In the browning of the Green Man's blues

Feb. 25—A TALE

The Green Man of South Georgia was feeling kind of blue, which turned him brown.

He was blue, or brown, because no rain had come to the Green Man's region in many weeks. And when the Green Man was feeling low, the land was as brown as the Green Man's blues.

For the Green Man and the land were one.

There are legendary occasions when the land and a person are one. If King Arthur, for example, was in ill health then Camelot was as dreary as the vacancy in the good king's eyes.

So, as the Green Man browned, South Georgia browned. As the Green Man collapsed into the blues of his crunchy hide, the land refused to thrive.

As with most legendary figures, the Green Man had brought this misery upon himself which in turn spread to the land.

Early in the spring, the Green Man had wished to enjoy a fair day. He wanted to stretch and roll under a bright sky. He wished for breezes to rustle the leaves on his head. He wanted to feel the sun warm his bark.

But it was a day scheduled for Rain. Rain was to visit upon this day with her falling strands of watery hair, with the gusting booms of her thundering sighs, with the bright flashes of her sparkling eyes.

Rain's dark skin rolled across the sky, and the Green Man watched her slow arrival on the horizon.

"Rain, Rain, go away," the Green Man chanted. "Come again some other day."

A thunderous laugh escaped Rain's lips. She always enjoyed the sing-song of this rhyme that had greeted her arrival in many spots of the world for many years. She chuckled in short claps of thunder to hear the Green Man chant it.

"Oh, Green Man," Rain sighed upon the wind, "where, oh where, where would I go, if you wish to remain green this answer you know. For if I go, then what would you be? A brown Green Man is no joy to see."

"Rain, Rain," the Green Man continued, "go away. Get thee gone from this day. Take the slosh of your soggy tresses and the sagging clouds of your garish dresses, take the boom of your nagging voice, go away! That is my choice."

The Green Man's alterations to the little rhyme insulted Rain. She thundered and glowered. Her skin darkened through the gossamer of the clouds. Her hair twirled in whips and bands of beaded water.

Seeing the Green Man shrink away, Rain's anger broke but not the sting of the Green Man's insults. Rain laughed and boomed into the wind, "If you wish me to be gone, then gone I'll be for far too long. And when you are a dry withered thing, remember the insult of the song you did sing."

With that, Rain, Rain went away, and she had not returned nigh upon 13 weeks and a day.

The Green Man looked upon the dry husks of his hands and his lands. Rain must visit, he realized, surprised that the words of a little song would keep her away for so long. He had merely wanted the one afternoon without Rain's company. She could have returned the next day, but she did not, had not, and apparently would not.

He would have to trick her back, the Green Man decided. But how? How to get Rain back to the Green Man and his land?

He contacted Thor, the Norse god of thunder who had maintained an on-again, off-again relationship with Rain through the years.

"I don't know," bellowed Thor upon hearing of the Green Man's plight. "Rain's a fickle bird. Sometimes she overstays her welcome. Other times, she can't be found for weeks. I have my own problems with Rain. Why should I get involved in thine?"

The Green Man understood the nature of Thor's personality and knew he had to frame his response just right.

"Surely, certainly, most matter of factly," the Green Man said, "the great Norse god of thunder, the tamer of the Midgard serpent, the hero of Asgard and Midgard, the mighty Odinson, the wielder of the hammer Mjolnir, who has laid waste to the frost giants of Jutenheim, who drank so deeply from the witch's horn that you created the ocean tides, certainly you are not saying that you are afraid of a little Rain, are you?"

Thor thundered, "I Say Thee Nay!"

With a tug of his beard, he brought Mjolnir down upon the ground. Thor raged and bellowed and roared and smote and, etc., etc. He did all of the things one would expect a Viking thunder lord to do. But he did not, could not, bring Rain.

Instead, Thor left a series of fires in his wake, which sent a cloud of smoke across the Green Man's dying land.

Thor looked at the smoke in the sky, gave the Green Man a shy grin, sputtered an "oops," and was gone.

The Green Man was left with his brown self, his brown land and his darkening sky which reminded him of Rain but was merely a smoky illusion of Rain.

He walked his lands until he came upon a church where the congregation was deep in prayer. The Green Man bowed his head and listened as the congregation prayed for deliverance and prayed for forgiveness.

Outside the church, the Green Man joined them in prayer.

He had forgotten the power of prayer. The power of words. The power of forgiveness.

He recalled that it had been words that had caused the trouble with Rain. He wondered if words might heal the rift with Rain.

"Rain, Rain, please come quickly," the Green Man said, "the land is dry, and I am sickly. Forgive my words, of them I'm sorry. Please come now, we need you, hurry."

Rain whispered on a wind from the sea, "With words you pushed me far away, with words you call me this other day. Forgiveness you seek and more from me. Now, I will show you and you will see. That I am quite the great forgiver, so I will come and cry you a river."

In the middle of the night, Rain arrived and she lowered her long flowing hair upon the Green Man's land. She stayed throughout the night into the morning and through the day into another evening.

Within the span of that day, the Green Man and his land became green again. Rain would have to visit several more times before all was right, but she was already coming and going, day to day, as she normally did in spring.

As the Green Man was no longer blue or brown but green, he remembered how he had asked in a time of need and now, that the need was being met, he remembered again the power of prayer and the power of words.

So, the Green Man offered in prayer two words of great power.

The Green Man simply and sincerely said, "Thank you."

Dean Poling is an editor with The Valdosta Daily Times and editor of The Tifton Gazette.