Green Leaf, a series of articles I had started last year will not be coming through, however feel free to browse through the criteria card I had made to which you can refer to the respective topic, or topics, of each post, it may inspire you to do research of your own.
The topic and its corresponding letter are found below the title — & its letter is also found at the top-left corner of each post’s visual.
Let's take a look into carbon, oxygen, carbon dioxide, water, and the Sun.
Criteria H | Carbon
Nature built
sandcastles
with carbon.
Shape-shifted
the land
we wander.
What is fundamental to the existence of life on Earth? You may think of food and safety, love and hope — Those answers aren’t wrong. However, I’d like you to add carbon, oxygen, carbon dioxide, water, and the Sun to your dictionary of necessities.
Criteria I | Oxygen
Oxygen and the atmosphere it floats in sustains and creates the possibility of life on Earth. It surrounds us, it envelopes us. Like a light blanket. The air we breathe is the oxygen we need. We breathe in heavily, deeply. We evolved to live here, with air, oxygen. Oxygen as a waste product of photosynthesis? Not so wasteful at all, I must say. Our planetary atmosphere renders Earth to be habitable and hospitable.
Criteria HI | Carbon dioxide
“Carbon dioxide?”
Please make it
Warm enough
To live.
My toes and fingers
Ache,
My nose is cold,
My ears are red.
It’s hard to breathe.
My body hurts.
A thin line of ice
Always lines
My eyebrows.
Filling our lungs
Warming the air
Filling the seas
What we can’t see.
“Carbon dioxide?”
I made it
Too hot.
What will happen
To us?
CO2 helps in giving us a comfortable and livable average temperatures. These are optimal conditions which sprout and encourage life. But if this blanket becomes too heavy and hot for the green house, which is Earth, well we will be put at the stake. A too heavy atmospheric blanket would bring down the walls of a steadfast structure that contains us in temperatures we can live in, water that is drinkable, and air we can breathe. Earth’s greenhouse is our home.
Criteria J | Water
You flow
like gold.
Drip
like sweat.
Grow
the food
we eat.
Fill the
warm cup
I hold.
Do you remember playing with marbles as a child? Maybe the blue ones — Imagine water as a blue marble going through the Pinball arcade game: What role does it play? Being hit by the forces of the paddles which are controlled by external forces. Being catapulted from one side to another. Like water gushing from one channel to the next.
The strength of water,
The life it gives,
Cannot be counted.
It cannot be measured.
No drops were counted
No river measured
Water simply flowed
And abundance was made and given.
Our number one homie. A shapeless form that ebbs and flows. Water, a spectacular chemical combination.
Criteria K | The Sun
The Sun’s Grace
Sun,
Take out your hands.
Fill us
with your
grace.
Touch us
with your
kindness.
Wrap us
in your
light.
Gifted with Light
“Let there be light.”
And light was created, made,
and gifted.
To give us day.
Each new morning.
And a sun set
and rise
To look to.
To marvel at.
If only we could
see it closer.
Feel it closer.
Touch its warmth.
But for now I’ll sit here in the sunshine.
Knowing tomorrow
They’ll be more light.
To marvel at.
To look for.
~
“Sunny-side up please.” Because life’s better with the Sun.
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