by Kim Doyle
I’ve watched the cornflowers explode with color by my backyard fence,
and turn towards the Sun, as it makes its daily celestial journey.
It is true that plants have photo-receptors
that are turned on by blue light.
It is true that a beckoning protein, auxine,
is generated.
It is true that cellular walls elongate
on the Sun side of the plant.
But the steps from Sun up to movement are still somewhat hazy.
I am lazy about researching this phenomenon more deeply.
I am content to observe it and marvel about its existence.
I eat plants and fowl and fish and worry
about their consciousness.
I fret about the big Sun of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
and how it attracts others to its fire; a desire to have it.
Like moths, humans seem drawn to it, nourished by it, warmed
by its controlled reactions but then, but then, but then.
The Sun goes down; the flower heads droop. The end.
Kim Doyle cites J. Robert Oppenheimer at the Trinity atomic bomb test: "I am become death, the destroyer of worlds."
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