Cool Green Flame
May 2014
Michael Gollin

The oak tree blooms with a cool green flame,
not the orange fire of seasoned wood.
Sunlight coils inward, photons kiss chlorophyll
with energy that fuses sugar from air and water,
and busy enzymes do their duty,
conceiving leaf, growth, tree, life.

Green are the photons that are not used, wasted,
reflected back to please my eye.

I am a tree.
I, too, breathe air, drink water,
take energy, and burn (but with biothermal warmth).
I lose my leaves. My limbs break and fall.
Yet I grow taller, adding rings,
as long as I can find the light.

***