The sun is a total green of light
inside a single mimosa seed riding
inside the sky-green and river-
green of its buoyant pod canoe.
A black tern holds its feet flat
against its body as it wings
through the green skies and currents
of an earth winging through sizzling
star celestials. A ship, a speck
passing by above on the green
undersurface sky of the ocean, has no
notion of the volcanic flow seeping
from a sizzling crack in the earth
miles below, the only line of light
appearing on the ocean floor.
It could be a frond of fern sizzling
and spooling, unfurling its green
wing within the current and wake
of the day, the only frond of fire
appearing on the rain forest floor.
Remember the eye of the tern,
a speck of sky in which rides
for this moment the full wake
of summer and its green currents,
the spool of the sun in its dawning.
It could easily be a shawl of light
placed around a woman’s shoulders
as she rests beneath a mimosa,
unaware of a seed drifting high
above her on the green undersurface
sky of July. See how the green fronds
of the rain unfurl, spooling away
in the ocean’s current. Look again.
A crack appears across the universe
of a buoyant pod. The first throb
of the seed’s green fire is dawning.