I resorted to photo poetry today, inspired by two disparate images and tried to bring them together for Pride month. I am quite annoyed with myself for not taking photos of two fire hydrants that struck me on my visit to the Jersey Shore area. They were yellow with green caps and the one near the hotel at Assateague Island was possibly the most elegant looking one surrounded by a riot of flowers. That picture would have been worth more than a thousand words and now, I have only words that should suffice to conjure that image for you dear reader. Enjoy the poem, for Pride Month and for rainbows.

Deep winter, those downy conifers arose
arranged in an alpine alliteration
on a path to somewhere or elsewhere 
or possibly nowhere. Their wandering 

needles traced that which coursed the palm 
of a suburban street, where water lay buried 
beneath snow in the veins of a profligate 
poetry. Is a fire hydrant an embankment

to metaphorical apostasy within states 
of matter? Those conifers simply stammer
in enjambment along every bank and furrow, 
sounding a Morse code of pinecones 

on summer grass, asking if the fireplug
is red in a stoic abstinence than 
the ephemeral rainbow scattering through
soft rainy mist painting the skies.

References:

Pinecones can stay on pine trees for more than 10 years before falling to the ground ~https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/unlocking-the-secrets-of-the-pinecone/

Pride Month is celebrated every June as a tribute to those who were involved in the Stonewall Riots also called the Stonewall Uprising, which began in the early hours of June 28, 1969 when New York City police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay club located in Greenwich Village in New York City. The riots served as a catalyst for the gay rights movement in the United States and around the world ~https://www.history.com/topics/gay-rights/the-stonewall-riots

The timberline is usually a point where there isn’t enough air, heat, or water to keep trees alive. The alpine timberline marks the point where the elevation is too high, and usually too cold, for tree growth. For e.g. The city of Vail, Colorado, is located near an alpine timberline in the Rocky Mountains. Trees along the Vail timberline include quaking aspen and lodgepole pine ~https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/timberline/

Fire hydrants are colour coded for water flow and pressure ~http://www.firehydrant.org/info/hycolor.html

BLUE	1500 GPM or more	Very good flows
GREEN	1000-1499 GPM	Good for residential areas
ORANGE	500-999 GPM	Marginally adequate
RED	Below 500 GPM	Inadequate

GREEN	Over 120 p.s.i	Extremely high pressure (caution!)
ORANGE	50-120 p.s.i.	“Normal” pressure range
RED	Below 50 p.s.i.	Must be “pumped”

WHITE	Public System Hydrant	(EBMUD)
YELLOW	Private System Hydrant	Connected to public water main
RED	Special Operation Hydrant	Not used except for spcl. procedures
VIOLET	Non Potable Supply	Effuent, pond or lake supply