“Energy cannot be created or destroyed...”
All the energy of the sun's fusion
of hydrogen into helium – the bright burst
we feel and see as heat and light
makes possible photosynthesis.
Lumbering creatures once ingested that energy
in the form of ferns or the flesh of fern-eaters.
Trapped under what was once dry land
and the pressure of eons, the energy
has now been released
like a genie from a bottle
with an inexorable rushing whooshing gush.
No longer recognizable as life forms,
the creatures have become great globs
of potential power, slick slime riding the waves to shore
in the form of a rainbow of broken promises.
Like ills from Pandora's box, this energy cannot be put back.
Gretchen Fletcher was a winner in the Poetry Society of America’s Bright Lights, Big Verse competition and was projected on the Jumbotron as she read her poem in Times Square. Her poetry has been published in numerous journals and anthologies including upstreet, Chattahoochee Review, Inkwell, The Mid-American Poetry Review, and Poetry as Spiritual Practice edited by Robert McDowell. She leads writing workshops for Florida Center for the Book, an affiliate of the Library of Congress. Her chapbook That Severed Cord was published by Finishing Line Press.
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