In the work of the world, everything is a poem;
slow petal hinges closing the drowsy flower -
expressed on evening’s darkening page -
white smudge, humble blurred blue halo,
surviving past her last consciousness of light,
that woke the flower first, always, from earth;
her simple sugar succumbed to chocolately fug,
chloroform sweetness of the honeysuckle drug -
poppy-eyed in struggling dusk, eyelids drooping,
gathering her own small cup of warm darkness.
An owl flash - small Pagan angel annunciating night,
his gorgeous white savagery of spread wings preying;
incandescent red star of dying leaf, lain smouldering
all day in autumn’s gold grate, among burning frost -
luminous also, one feather, but moon-dipped once,
still dripping silver liquid - losing skeletal theories
of sky, motion, dexterity; essential bird-part lost,
discarded involuntarily by a shooting orange fox,
in a field haunted by embroidered butterflies -
too blue to accept extinction, iridescence’s end,
after such time spinning sky fibre into wings -
aesthetic and physical understanding of gravity.
Still a poem, this ghost-blue feather - bedraggled,
without blood or whatever fuels white birds in air;
root-clue to wing, sky-clue of flight, symbolic emblem
of the bird, softened from bone, fashioned from skin -
still wound in unzipped hooks, coiled symphonics -
just audible from the crumbling chemicals, ecstatic
even in ruin; such stores of ecstasy in a single feather
cell - songs never sung again - lonely part of a flying
whole - no longer with necessary mechanisms,
connections; but remembering to the last atom -
telling the brown ground-mouth how it is up there,
still singing of it as the last shining molecule falls
apart, back to stardust - becoming one noise -
principle of flight re-furled, laid down, stored
by a generous Universe dreaming molecular
schemes; the symbiotic pattern of the feather.
The foolish moth crashes unconscious, light-
casualty - bumping snow-flakely into desire,
stunned - his wings are sails paddling earth -
legs, stick-wings; he feels like us, struggling
arms outstretched, being planes, birds,
exalting in wind, sunshine, freedom -
how we spread our wings when joy presses
that scripted bone button, still written there,
instructions between the shoulder-blades -
fossil-wings, de-feathered stumps, reflexive
sprouting, though there is nothing to see;
except maybe on summer backs of naked
children playing. The moth is up, stumbling,
soon gulped by darkness; his doomed flight/
near death/survival is a poem - incorporating
tiger-name, Bonsai red Viking horns, burned-
paper wings; more stanzas in his small moth poem,
that will be written all night across wild black sky -
and coiled in him, expressed from cocoon to wing-
dust fallen - scrabbled here, his bright brown mark
on earth. I could make a moth if I were God -
by blowing on this invisible scrambled script,
make it speak again, more moth poems, on and on;
but rubbed in my thumb and forefinger, just stays
moth-dust, inert brown shimmer; nothing - no moths
spring from my fingers’ frictional electricity, except
the idea of moths - but that’s the start – even
this mothy dust-smear glimmering with intent.
Is there anything alive that does not shine, or
was part of being alive, has gleaming residue;
until death switches back the master-light -
to the mysterious off position; life’s darkness
of possible endings, new breeds, light species.
That little flower keeps luminescing in gloom,
though it has never known a kiss -
who knows if bees came, rubbed
her throat, gathered her pollen, sugars;
if she is mother-flower, floral spinster -
now, I kiss her - kin, sister,
to become part of her poem
this evening - mark, celebrate such union -
which the Genome now shows was written
always in the world, but never read by us.
Our kiss, she enjoys, faint muffled sighing
like the voice of snowflakes; her bluish-white
shine glimmering now above moth-shimmer -
even this conjunction, beauty enough for one night.
But for this night lyric, I gather more lines because
everything is a poem - even my own white hand,
also luminous in darkness, reaching to her neck -
swan of my spine, corn-curl hair, crustacean
pucker in limpet lips; the consummate poem
of eyes speckled silver at night by star reflection -
organic mirror of the galaxy, black pupil of space;
Bonsai Milky Way clustered with promising spirals,
quieted a moment to concentrate on smaller poems -
beautifying leaves in the greater global poem;
universal work begun when time hatched too.
Reciprocally, her DNA altering my whole poem –
write in me too, small flower, thin-lipped, kissed;
rhyme our meeting, touch, with dark verses of white -
drawn from our communal absorption of summer light,
perfume of sweet floral pheromone; taste of pollen -
there is nothing I bring that is not love, our language.
Moth and owl of the Night Poem speak it too -
the honeysuckle, butterfly, orange fox, feather;
still - among the murmur of crumbling spirals,
the red leaf burning a star-hole in the Universe.
Everything is a poem - poem among poems,
greater, grander works, interlinked, growing;
globes of poetry, sphere around sphere
of interwoven layers - interconnected
phrases, words - on and on, in and in,
within, beyond; out, out further until
atmosphere, gases, stars – that stark silver
poetry of stars - austere, musical, polished
to the bone; poem skeletons, master-works
in exhibiting darkness - beyond light, after
spectrum - child rainbow to full colour;
where there is no one light of morning,
no flower or moth; where the orange fox
does not run or uproot the silver feather -
angel-owl proclaim; to the ultimate poem,
mother-poem - original poem - the Word.