On a spinning planet with a tilted axis
The northern half turns to face the central Sun
Longer days
Stronger light
Energy borne of nuclear fusion
Percolated upward through half a million miles of plasma
Radiated into space
Shining brilliantly
For ten billion years.
Over the wide open ocean
A thousand miles from land
Under clear skies
Water molecules absorb the energy
Light, infrared, UV
All converted into energy of molecular vibration
Heat
And they jump, by the trillions of trillions of trillions
Liquid into vapor
Nothing appears to happen
Except a slight moistening of the air
Massive amounts of energy converted, transferred
Invisibly.
As this moist air drifts over land
The Sun warms the ground below
Warming the air above
Warm air rises
Expanding
Cooling
Reaching the dew point
Condensing
A turbulent patchwork of updrafts and downdrafts
Popcorn clouds
Growing
Towering
Darkening
Droplets colliding
Expanding
Gaining mass
Attracted by gravity to the Earth below
Falling through the rising air
Rain!
April showers.
Magnesium, iron, manganese, copper
Elements created in the core of long-dead stars
Condensed into a molten planet
Crystallized into rock
Weathered into sand and soil
Dissolved by April showers
Captured by roots
Carried up to leaves
To play starring roles
In the great dance of life.
Metal ions
Coordinated by organic molecules
Perfected over billions of years
Manganese splitting water
Releasing oxygen
Magnesium surrounded by nitrogen and carbon
Chlorophyll
Optimizing resonance
Capturing photons from the Sun
Energizing electrons
Iron and copper ferrying them
To be energized yet again
By more photons
Magnesium again
At heart of Rubisco
The most abundant protein on earth
Seven hundred million tons
Capturing carbon from the air
To become the core
Of everything living.
Photo-synthesis
Creation from light
Complexity from simplicity
Diversity from uniformity
Evolved 2.7 billion years ago
By humble bacteria
Changing the planet permanently
Oxygenating the atmosphere
Precipitating the iron from the oceans
Creating the ore deposits that have built our cities
Humble bacteria
Captured by a nucleated cell
The ancestor of all plants
Chloroplasts.
Photosynthesis
One reaction to drive them all
And in the sunlight bind them
Carbon to oxygen
To hydrogen
To nitrogen
To sulfur
To phosphorus
Sugars
Proteins
Fats
DNA
Plants
Insects
Animals
Wood
Coal
Oil
Natural gas
All ultimately created by sunlight
Captured by photosynthesis.
Cells sense the longer days
Warmer nights
April showers
And send signals
Expand!
Divide!
Buds bursting
Seeds germinating
Ancient programs
Evolved through hundreds of millions of years
Evolved?
Created?
Creatively evolved?
Evolvedly created?
Does it matter?
Can it not be both?
There is more complexity and intricacy
In a blade of grass
Than in the greatest of human machines.
Jet engines are marvelous designs
Feats of engineering
Machined down to the micron
And yet inside one of those blades
It is just metal
In one featureless mass
Ten million atoms thick
Doomed to wear
And eventually to fail.
Inside of a leaf
Is not uniform at all
A leaf is not just a factory for capturing sunlight
But also a factory for its own construction
All of the workers and machinery to build itself
And the blueprints for its own design.
Inside of a leaf
There are no uniform masses of anything
Each rigid-walled cell a universe unto itself
Transcribing 30,000 genes
Thirty thousand different proteins
Each with an essential function
Building structure
Moving materials
Catalyzing reactions
Creating and sustaining
The miracle of photosynthesis.
If each leaf has more complexity
Than a house or a business
Then the whole tree
Or the whole animal
Is more like a great city
With orchestrated flows
Of supplies
Of nutrition
Of information.
As the days warm
And buds burst forth
These great cities build cathedrals
Structures of beauty
Beacons of color and fragrance
With a promise of sweet nectar
Attracting other life forms
Each also with the complexity of a great city
Each coevolved over hundreds of millions of years
Bees
Wasps
Hummingbirds.
At the heart of these cathedrals
That we call flowers
Lie the sacred blueprints
All of the instructions to build entire cities
Packaged neatly into small sticky spheres
That we call pollen
And as the flying creatures arrive
They gather some of these spheres
And drop off others from elsewhere
To alight on the altars
Where they tunnel inward
And the blueprints fuse
Recombining
Reassorting
Exploring new possibilities.
And as the cathedrals collapse
These new possibilities
Begin to grow
And then stop
Locked in stasis
Suspended animation
Surrounded with future fuel
Ripening
Protected from the elements
Packaged potentialities.
And when even the entire cities collapse
And fade to dust
These packaged potentialities remain
Scattered to the earth
Awaiting April showers
To awaken
Sending down roots
Launching leaves into the sunlight
We call them seeds.
Inside our square sequestered spaces
Where we stare at our little screens
And fret about distant wars
And cast judgment on those who disagree
We peer out the window
And smile
April showers bring May flowers
We say
And perhaps we pluck a few cathedrals
To adorn our tabletops
For a few days.
Four billion years of coevolved wonders
Millions of species
Ourselves among them
A rocky planet
Converted into a living, ever-changing biosphere
Powered by a shining star
All just a backdrop
To our petty struggles
Our fears
Our world of abstractions
And warring narratives.
In these days
As the news turns dark
Step out into that backdrop
In between April showers
And look with new eyes.
See that warbler flitting among the new leaves
Seeking small insects?
Dendroica coronata perhaps?
Yellow-rumped Warbler
Butterbutt
He is not merely an object
A meat-robot existing by happenstance
In a universe that just happens to exist.
He is a city unto himself
A self-assembling marvel
Perfectly suited to fly
Thousands of miles each year
Arriving here as the buds break
To seek nourishment
To build a nest
To attract a partner
To raise the next generation of marvels
As he was himself raised
In an unbroken line
Stretching back nearly four billion years.
His distant ancestors were dinosaurs
And before them lizards
Then fish
Then simple sea creatures
Then single cells
Then bacteria
The same sequence that gave rise to us
We were also lizards once, and fish.
This backdrop that surrounds us is our heritage
Far more wondrous and complex than our greatest creations.
We have sought to remake the world in our image
A world of machines and objects
Subject to our will
Cities of wonder unto themselves reduced to commodities
Fields upon fields of identical corn plants
Animals packed into barns
Our own selves secure behind windows
Of homes
And cars
And planes
And spaceships.
We have sought to remake the world
In the glory of our own minds
Our own egos
And somehow we have found only loneliness
Isolation
Depression
Emptiness
Disappointment.
They say we must change now
A Great Reset
A world of dense cities
Of electric vehicles
Of centralized order
Of safety
Of control
One last attempt
Of the human ego
To impose will
Upon a chaotic and unwilling world.
That way lies more suffering
More loneliness
More separation
And it cannot ultimately succeed
Without acknowledging and working within
The evolved processes
That sustain life.
The future is not out there
In the minds of experts
With great global schemes
And each of us sequestered away
In little boxes
Projecting our minds
Into the Metaverse.
The future is local
Seeing the background
Remembering ourselves
As part of natural cycles
Replacing those picture-perfect lawns
With sprawling gardens
So that the land may nourish us
And we may in turn nourish the ecosystem
Of cities unto themselves
Seeking balance and participation
I do not believe we are in this world to transcend it
To remake it
To tame it
We cannot wage war on that which sustains us
And expect to reap joy and prosperity.
I believe we are in this world to participate
To experience material existence
To collaborate
To co-evolve
And springtime
Is a good time
To see with new eyes
To jump in
To sow seeds
Packaged potentialities
Of a new world.
April showers
Awakening new life
In darkness
Unfurling new leaves
Into sunlight
Beginning cycles anew.
I am echoing Michele's sentiments !! I too had heartfelt tears as I read this beautiful piece, and I will read and re-read and share. AND I will gather my collected seeds and gently tuck them into the warming spring soils as a symbolic reminder that I too want to play my part in this wondrous world. Thanks Markael!
Your posts often touch my heart and elicit tears…this one again. In seeing, loving, and sharing the marvels of Life with us, our distracted eyes begin to see too. Then our hearts expand their capacity to love, a blade of grass, a leaf, a warbler, our bodies, each other, all converging in wondrous marveling of marvelous wonders! 💚🌎🌿🦋🐣🌧🌺💖
Thank you!