Lightning, Nature’s First Invention

Dr Abe V Rotor

All over the globe lightning strikes at one point or another
incessantly night and day, in good or bad weather.
The atmosphere and earth meet in deafening thunder
that accompanies a spark of a thousand atomic bombs
enough to light a city for days if captured and stored.

In the process chemistry combines nitrogen with oxygen,
one-to-three in proportion to form nitrates in tons
and tons in a single bolt, becoming negatively charge
and soluble, riding on the rain to descend to earth.

Nitrate the free radical ion joins a positive ion and forms
combinations of compounds that nourish plants and all
photosynthetic organisms - and the saprophytes, too
- the mushrooms and their kin of Kingdom mycophyta.

Wonder the hills and mountains turn green soon after
the first rain in May or even only a shower in April;
afterwards the whole landscape builds into a realm
of emerald green as the sky sends boundless energy.

Electrical energy transforms into chemical energy
passing from the inorganic to the organic world, thence
through the living world - the food chain and web,
food pyramid, there into the ecosystems and biomes,
finally to the biosphere that make the earth full of life.

Mysterious are nature's ways, the sun's energy
transforming into electrical energy through lightning,
henceforth building proteins, the building blocks
of all living things, great or small, as they grow and die,
and into the the next cycle the process is the same,
ad infinitum.