`A Great Largesse'

Washington is the greenest place I’ve ever lived in at least two senses, though I’m referring to the color. Houston, where we lived until April, is in a protracted drought while, as of this writing, the rain in greater Seattle has paused only momentarily in the last 48 hours. NE Eighth Street, which runs east-west between our neighborhood and downtown Bellevue, is a long, rolling green tunnel. The saplings in the median are the color of iceberg lettuce. Flanking the street are the darker hues of conifers, oaks, ashes, a few maples and, unexpectedly, tulip trees with their geometrically straight trunks. The effect, in the cloud-diffused light of late afternoon, is of a vast theme park devoted to photosynthesis. I’ve read evolutionary explanations for the soothing qualities possessed by green. I don’t know about that, though I know that massed quantities of green buoy my spirits. I associate it in some pre-rational way with solace and contentment. In “Green,” Richard Wilbur calls it “a great largesse”:

“Tree leaves which, till the growing season’s done,
Change into wood the powers of the sun,

“Take from that radiance only reds and blues.
Green is a color that they cannot use,

“And so their rustling myriads are seen
To wear all summer an extraneous green,

A green with no apparent role, unless
To be the symbol of a great largesse

“Which has no end, though autumns may revoke
That shade from yellowed ash and rusted oak.”