When “energy” is topic given voice,

Of oil, gas, or coal we’re apt to think,

Or perhaps a renewable of choice:

Solar, wind, bio, or ocean sink.

Or perhaps it’s energy use we see:

Bulldozers, trucks, or electric lights,

Motors, industry, a lowly bee,

Running animals or airplane flight.

Sun’s energy draws rich moisture

Through veins to trees’ leafy tips,

Grow to defined green structure,

Then fall when autumn heat dips.

It’s what you have with jubilation,

All we tend to accept as norms —

Planetary orbits, quasar radiation,  

Volcanoes, earthquakes, storms.

Warmth inequities have solar source

(Except residual earth formation —

Vulcan and radioactivity, of course)

And orbit, gravity and tilted rotation.

Vibration is the essence of heat,

Molecules that hum with vigor,

Are hotter the faster they beat,

Spread and dissipate with rigor.

The story of heat energy is flow

From warm to cooler place.

Energy we see wherever we go

Is heat averaging its space.

We’re accustomed to above energies,

We recognize relation to heat utilized,  

Molecular processes and physiologies

“Want” to be averaged and equalized.

So energy is nature in the whole:

Whether robust or far more subdued,

Intelligent construction on a roll,

Or physics, DNA recipe imbued. 

DNA tells wasp how to build nest,

Physics informs rocks of decay rate.

We build house, paint it the fanciest,

Tidy the yard with fence and gate.

And as quickly as its fully done,

Molecules start breaking away.

As rain and photons from the sun

Turns white prematurely gray.

Energy leaks as photons hit,

Electrons shift or fly away,

Make a different element fit,

And soon paint starts to fray.      

Oxygen forms rust on iron and steel,

By reacting molecule by molecule.

This heat energy is hard to feel,

For slow escape’s the general rule.

Need energy to build, it’s thought,

But entropy will wear it down.

For entropy is energy unsought  

That dismantles and tears apart.

So energy is a basic story, it’s plain,

It’s related mostly to heat’s flow.

In cycles and waves, in the main:

The agent of structural come and go. 

© 2008 R. Leland Waldrip