Genius
Buried in the soil, we seek the crown;
Rolled up in the ground, we serve the light;
Denied the sky, we try to drown
Our weekends in the world’s long night.
Our outshining glory
Starts in dark, in dirt:
Day’s defining story
Begins and ends in earth.
We crave the canopy, the air,
The cover of the desperate wind,
The motions of the atmosphere
Through which the stars ascend.
Like sunlight, we deserve
Your foliage, your breath,
Which both transfigure and disturb
The season of our death.
Simple organisms that we are,
Copies of a distant tune,
Weeds inflamed by prisms
That fuel a pulsar from a tomb,
Cells whose science might prolong
The rising of the moon, since
By definition, all along
The last line is transcendence.
Good Friday, Holy Saturday, 2023
Kaiholu
Explanation
This Easter parable is about florigen, who sounds like a medieval knight, but which is actually the gene, or genius, which forges out of bits and pieces of the sun a flower, risen out of the cold, the tomb of soil, each spring. It is the brain of the leaf, in charge of the future of the race, and yet hidden, little-understood, literally hiding its light under a bushel. It is the balance between the night and day which triggers a response in the DNA of a plant which causes it to flower. The proteins of plants are influenced by the proportion, the periodicity, of light and dark. They are counting the days, using circadian clocks. Only under the perfect conditions, as judged by the florigen, will a flower be born.
It is a similar sequence of events, harvests driven by weather, by the lush summer, by the coming winter, which we celebrate at Easter.