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.