blue bubble

Convection roils our lower atmosphere
transporting solar energy away
if, at most frequencies the air is clear
not brown like Delhi, Beijing, or LA.
There, photons give it up far overhead
the upper air's no cooler than below
the column luminesces infrared
and what's been heated's got no place to go.
Still, all of it must stratify at night
for lack of insolation, gravity
like Maxwell's demon, sorts them out by height;
the atmosphere grows stable as a sea.
Another planet, orbiting its sun
might prove quite alien, when all is done.