My Life

Photon B. Jones

aka Margaret S.

 

"Your life begins here,"

I hear them say.

They are speaking to me,

A gamma ray.

 

Everyone is nervous

For the start of the game,

And I nervously await

The calling of my name.

 

You see, here in the core

is where we silently await,

Our turn to go through

One special gate.

 

I am stirred out of thought,

"You!  Photon B. Jones!

Get in that line

For the radiative zone."

 

I enter the zone

And am amazed, for I see,

Hundreds of millions of people

Trying to crash into me.

 

They move in all directions,

From the left and to the right,

Then BAM! I am hit,

And closer to becoming light.

 

So that's the ‘random walk' process,

Boy it was fun.

But now I realize,

The real work must be done.

 

As time presses on

I hear people moan,

"Oh no! Please no!

Not the convective zone!"

 

Their cries are not silly,

For now is the time

When us photons grow older,

Much past our prime.

 

 

 

It's time to decide

What to do with my life.

Should I live like a bachelor,

Or settle down with a wife?

 

There are a number of options

If it's a family I want,

Twenty-two years with a magnetic cycle,

Or an eleven year sunspot.

 

"Hey, Jones!"  I am called,

"Come on be a man.

Don't settle with a wife

On that eleven year plan!"

 

"Once you go to a sunspot,

There's no turning back.

The strong magnetic forces will take you,

And freedom you'll lack."

 

"But if you come with us

We could have great fun,

And mess with planet Earth,

Once we get off  this Sun."

 

That convincing young photon

Was changing my mind,

So I went with him and left

My prior dreams behind.

 

We got to the station and

And a hot vehicle we did mount.

Now to wait until this ride

Begins to bubble out.

 

It bubbles out when hot,

Then sinks back when cool.

It's making the sun pulsate

Like a gigantic wave pool.

 

Once out of the convective,

Boy, what a sight!

We are now in what they call,

The Œzone of light'.

 

 

To become visible light

We have come so far;

On the photosphere of the sun,

Is now what we are.

 

On to the chromosphere,

Where the real fun starts.

It's where we make our move

And get into the charts.

 

Once on the chromosphere,

We head toward the stair,

That points us in the direction

Of the solar flare.

 

We jump on the flare

To get off this star,

And wonder if our journey

Will take us very far.

 

As we move from the Sun,

We are going so fast.

I wonder to myself,

How long will this last?

 

As I am tossing about

different thoughts in my head,

A fellow photon I am with,

Turns to me and said:

 

"We'll have so much fun,

Just wait and see.

Think of how meddlesome

And troubling we can be."

 

"We can disrupt Earth's climate,

And satellites, in fact;

Shut off military surveillance,

So track things, they can't."

 

This is our stop,

Off the flare we jump,

And fall down to Earth

In one giant clump.

 

 

As much trouble we try

To make with our might,

All our efforts fail;

We end up Northern Lights.