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We’re using this poem, found by the teacher, as part of early stage ideas development with the children..............

Coal Fire

And once in some swamp-forest, these

Were trees.

Before the first fox thought to run,

These dead black chips were one

Green net to hold the sun.

Each leaf in turn was taught the right

Way to drink light;

The twigs were made to learn

How to catch flame and yet not burn;

Branch and then bough began to eat

Their diet of heat.

And so for years, six million years, or higher,

They held that fire.

And here, out of the splinters that remain,

The fire is loose again.

See how its hundred hands reach here and there,

Finger the air;

Then, growing bolder, twisting free,

It fastens on the remnants of the tree

And, one by one,

Consumes them; mounts beyond them; leaps; is done;

And goes back to the sun.

Louis Untermeyer

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