Green
✺
A turning leaf stays partly green at first, then reveals splotches of yellow and red as the chlorophyll gradually breaks down. Dark green seems to stay longest in the veins, outlining and defining them. During the summer, chlorophyll dissolves in the heat and light, but it is also being steadily replaced. In the fall, on the other hand, no new pigment is produced, and so we notice the other colors that were always there, right in the leaf, although chlorophyll’s shocking green hid them from view. With their camouflage gone, we see these colors for the first time all year, and marvel, but they were always there, hidden like a vivid secret beneath the hot glowing greens of summer.
—Diane Ackerman
✺
Poem: After Reading Lucretius, I Go to the Pond
Poem: The Poet with His Face in His Hands
Poem: Just Lying in the Grass at Blackwater
Poem: How The Grass and The Flowers Came to Exist, a God-Tale
Poem: [i thank you god for most this amazing]