Irises, purple on green stems
grow up from dark brown earth.
Rising from puddles of rainwater
and mounds of clay
come colors that were apparent
in neither liquid nor solid.
Nor is the misty lavender-periwinkle-lilac color
of the petals
or the jade green shades
of the leaves
visible in the pale, twisting roots
that were buried in the dark.
The sunlight is neither purple nor green–
And yet the colors come,
appearing by an alchemy
I do not comprehend.
They appear– so reliably we sometimes forget
it’s a trick
of magic.
Chemists and botanists could name
the compositions of the pigments,
I don’t doubt, and more.
(Tell me again the story
of how chlorophyll came to be in eukaryotic cells
with walls;
what could be more poetic than
photosynthesis?)
But the description
of all the little pieces finding their places,
the shapes of molecules that somehow
produce color,
the mingling of quantities of energy and matter
delineated in the greatest detail
with precisely drawn diagrams
for each step in the dance
could only make it seem
more marvelous
to perceive.
How do they know
to do all that? They do not know how, perhaps,
but they do it anyway.
We may not fully understand,
but we love anyway.
Buried Verses 