The air is filled with the smell of freshly cut grass. A leafy web of Morning Glories scales the chain link fence. Their blue faces turn toward the sun and open to drink in the warm rays. I lean over and gaze into the flower’s creamy white throat where a bumblebee is shoving his head into the pollen.

When I close my eyes there is another morning glory, a deep blue pool in a national park. The breeze no longer carries the sweet scent of grass. The warm air ebbs and flows, coating me with fitful bursts of caustic sulfuric odors from nearby geysers and fumeroles.

Leaning over the wooden fence, I gaze into its depths like the bumblebee climbing into the open flower. It is the icy blue of glaciers and cold mountain streams, but heat vapors rise from the still surface and distort the air. The bottom narrows to a tube, like a flower stem. It disappears into the earth and the pool drinks the broth stewed by geothermal powers.

No fish can swim in this scalding mixture, but it is teeming with life. Wee beasties thrive in the hot depths and give the pool its pure blue color. Although the water is still, their world is not tranquil. In the cooler yellow and orange rim, an army of alien microorganisms lurks and multiplies as they wait for the temperature to cool in the deeper waters. Over the years, inch by inch, they spread and invade. The delicate morning glory is slowly wilting around the edges and mutating into a sickly poppy. But strengthening heat from the depths renews the pool. For now, the blue center is secure.

I step back from the fence and open my eyes. The sated bumblebee is backing out of the flower. His flight wobbles and he staggers into the next blossom.

A pool and a flower with the same name. Each speaks in its own language of the glory of its creator.