Sunlight

A pome for these times

Normally,

I prefer sunlight

To everything else

So familiar

And yet

Not the same:

Incandescent, GE, LED, Tungsten, Fluorescent.

Sunlight,

Giver of all life.

For some, a fancy submarine

And a Space X

 or Y or Z

Rocket

Is fine.

I prefer the open meadow,

Lupine and poppy

After the rains,

Marshlands, boggy ..

Mountains and plains

Cathedrals of granite, of stone

Vast spaces to roam

Bounded only by skies

And

Filled by air

We breathe

Grounded by ground

Itself

Earth, dirt also

Giver of all life.

We have become takers, acquisitive, clever

Ambitious as those phallic rockets

Pointing out and away

Always ready to explode

By accident

Or design.

And

Deep sea submarines

Diving into depths, into death

Because

Maybe you are too bored?

There is so much to do

We are now too bored.

And yet we remain–

Each of us

Here

No one escapes–

We are

Mortal

Small

Infinitesimal

Tiny, baby squirrels with no fur

Blind.

Earth herself will 

Swallow us whole

All of us! 

All at once, if need be.

That is her capacity

Until the rain

Washes us clean,

And Sunlight

Earth, dirt, oxygen

Evokes

Us again

As green shoots, saplings

Bracken and fern—

In a whole new world,

A whole new world

Without us,

As we were:

Ungrateful children.

Of a Mother

Whose love

Was literally everything

on Earth.

—Ami Chen Mills