Meet Chlorophyll!

Hello! My name is Chlorophyll.
I live in plants. I’m green.
I have a certain super-skill
within the plant-life scene.

All plants need just four things to grow.
The first is sunlight. Heat!
The next is water, H2O,
always a special treat.

The third is known as CO2.
Carbon dioxide – tick!
And finally, there’s me. Woo-hoo!
You’re thinking, what’s his trick?

With me, plants get big energy
from sunlight. They grow well!
They put together 2 and 3.
It’s like a magic spell!

The spell makes glucose. Very cool!
Perhaps you’ve heard of this,
a name you might have learned at school:
it’s photosynthesis.

The photo part means ‘light’ in Greek,
and what about the rest?
Coming together! Hour, day, week,
month, onwards. It’s the best!

Plants take in all the unclean air
and breathe out O2. Yay!
That’s why we need them, everywhere,
to help our Earth each day.

​

- - -

Published on The HyperTexts, August 2024

​

- - -​

Hooray for Chlorophyll! Perhaps a few months before its publication, there was a call for STEM poems (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) from a children’s poetry journal. I can’t remember which one now! I sent Chlorophyll, but he was unsuccessful there. We weren’t too bothered because the journal has a clear preference for free verse, publishing just one metrical poem in that issue, as far as I recall. Fortunately other journals are more open to rhythm ‘n’ rhyme, and Chlorophyll was very happy when Mike Burch gladly accepted him for The HyperTexts, hooray.

​

I was a bit rubbish at Science at school, such that I had to do some research before writing the poem, and afterwards I asked my older brother Graham to check it was right! I’d used Wikipedia, and Bro G said it was fine. He looks a bit like Chlorophyll here. I think there might be a link between the Green Man and Chlorophyll, a pleasant thought.

- - -