The Possible Children

The word of the flower lies in the seed;
ghost of the flower that made the seed -

as you and I carried our recipe for children
all these years, like a smouldering secret -

I felt them, the possible children waiting,
with grandparent ghosts in their skin -

as I have seen them looking sometimes
through their faces, printed in their eyes;

and the children’s babies with years to sleep,
as buds are written at the heart of the flower.


The ear of the Universe

In the beginning is the Word,
which will write - it knows -

language of skin and bone -
shining eye letters, red heart.

Making vehicles of love
with gorgeous chemistry;

embroidering life’s poetry
in the ear of the Universe.

Sky is reading my heart and eyes

Thudding, low-slung, slate-wool booms,
shuddering my thin, temple shell-bones -

the crumbling Norse-god
is still in senile residence,

drunk on elemental forces,
mashed up, swallowed raw;

lurching randomly - loudly bumping
around dark, cavernous starry domes;

his resurrected sounds bang, hurt
my overblown pressured eyeballs.

Tree-greens are badly transfigured
into exorcised, crude, colour-spirit;

too lurid without leaf body -
silver palm, white sun-blood;

light fingers - like angel claws -
scratch through malevolent blue;

forces wrestling for the troubled soul
of this wrongly-polished summer day.

The laughing river is choked with mercury;
the stern Presbyterian loch sterilised, black.

Sky is reading my heart and eyes -
translating, replicating, mimicking;

suddenly watering the redundant, wormy
rose with enormous, sluggish silver tears -

that burst out intemperately,
like heavenly blood-letting.

In coming to know the Human Genome

‘Before the discovery of the Genome, we did not know there was a document at the heart of every cell three billion letters long of whose content we knew nothing – now, having read parts of that book we are aware of myriad new mysteries.’ Matt Ridley, Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters, Fourth Estate, 2000


In coming to know the Human Genome

In coming to know the Human Genome,
we move nearer to understanding God -

not further away, as science has wrongly
driven us to conclude hitherto; far nearer

to hearing, reading, knowing the Word -
understanding the organic/spirit concept.

Science has turned the Victorian corner -
elaborating the white formula, Latin map,

it took for the nature, entire, of skeleton
and bone; red corpuscles, valve, muscle,

pumping blood mechanism, mistaken
for the whole heart solved, understood -

recognising now, under unromantic laboratory
striplights, this cold, synthetic gleam it mistook

for its own neutered soul, narrowness miscalculated
as clarity of vision - meanness of its slice scalpelled

from reality, analysed - alienated from context.
Always knowing somewhere this rigid, absolute

model did not fit these imprecise edges of reality -
where the utterly exact, knowable, comprehensible,

immutable, measureable, bleeds in and out
everywhere; is connected to everything else.

Was God Surprised by Us

Was God Surprised by Us

Was God surprised by us -
still; our hands, eyes, love,

even if He had dreamed
of the Word’s flowering;

of all possible blooms
in His evolving garden.

Was He pleased when we kneeled,
embarrassed, because He believes

in Freedom, Pride, Will - suffering
such unlikely price, gathering woe,

of no direct interference, witnessed
in this premature, burning autumn

of the garden - cultivated Winter
of Creation cultured by mankind.

Reluctantly leaving only amputated
power - dangling spiritual umbilical

cord, invisible,
up to Heaven.

Animal of the Universe

Animal of the Universe

Tonight a sky of stars is speaking light -
there is something I nearly understand,

coming from original dust, space-home;
as animal of the Universe. Some music

of colossal dancing, also under my skin,
as moving the tree’s ballet dancer arms.

But I can’t quite remember - make out
what they’re saying, singing; not quite.

The Moon’s Word

‘Th’unwearied Sun from day to day/ Does his Creator’s pow’r display;/ And publishes, to every land,/ The work of an almighty hand.// Soon as the evening shades prevail,/ The Moon takes up the wond’rous tale;/ And nightly to the listening Earth,/ Repeats the story of her birth…’ Joseph Addison, 1672-1719, An Ode

The Moon’s Word

It is the Moon’s word - hung
silver among whispering stars.

Shining white root,
before dust, stone -

the chattering letters of life -
organic noise of water, blood,

flesh and green;
elegies of death.

Wearing her soul -
which is cold light,

as insect and ice
wear exoskeleton;

her own lonely species
of light - honed so cool,

austerely holy, pure; turned
madly bright with loneliness.


A ragged rock bowl
of numb winter sea

hears her silver word,
even in sleeping skin,

mirror ear-sheen;
real as a dream -

twitches, remembering
vibrant sun languages;

the dazzling blindness,
shattering into wet fire -

poaching corpulent autumn suns,
sinking under, orange, overripe -

gutted gold light punctured
slowly over syrupy waves,

turning warm red
as animal blood.


In Nights’s black printing ink,
Moon’s white word is written;

voicing her negative, faux light,
until even a high, queenly tree -

wearing her jewel in keener’s hair -
her sparkling winter starnet tangles,

kneels to her waist in black soil;
and blue Earth holds her breath -

listening, all suspended, resting,
to the fledgling night-angel cry,

born apprentice in Nature’s pantheon;
a startling white owl, silver-dipped -

winged ornament, perfect accessory
in dark schemes of decorating night;

hearing the murdered animal spirits
crawling among moss, fallen leaves;

brittle consonants of glinting black flints -
river’s mercurial skin, her travelling heart

of music; long humming conundrums
of identity - signature impermanence -

smudging milk-blue air with luminosity;
sickly ghosts of her closed honeysuckle –

white brides who have failed with bees;
nunly they hang, offering up sacrifice -

perfume as the last prayer of the flower,
mimicking a signature smell of Heaven.


Her cold white sound,
bloodless command,

has won the season’s night -
overcome both Sun and Earth,

which no longer breathe;
leaving only monuments.


Moon, always the last white light
left on in the sky for child Earth -

last word on Night’s black page;
printing Sun’s lifeless blueprint,

her heartless pressed flower,
as our body makes bearable

God’s light - so transfigured,
we can look upon ourselves.


It is the Moon’s word
hung in black silence.

The word Grace

The word Grace

In the loveless company of stars,
reading of the Human Genome,
twinkling map of organic existence -

of kinship with the dark leaf
crying silver in my brother palm,
owl hooting his nocturnal love -

stuttering mouse, nervous at nut supper,
rheumatic tree cracking bulging knuckles,
skewering the fat yellow buttermoon -

honeysuckle sugar polluting
the blue ghost of evening;
moths bumping plumply into light -

thinking of the Word
calling all life
from chemicals and love -

everything alive,
from the same trinity of letters,
this simple holy script,

I hunted my language archive -
like a smoker, restless at midnight,
turning out sofas, dusty drawers,

old unworn clothes, dead and stiff;
desperate for just the right thing -
rifling the Contemporary Section,

Popular Idiom, Vernacular;
neat boxes of Metaphor -
shimmering, spilling shelves of Simile -

onward to the Science Department’s
rusty hinges, ignoring the need for ID,
warning signs for trespassers, ignoramuses,

to Chemistry’s mysterious incandscent symbols,
Biology’s volatile Latin -
through History’s shifting, creaking doors -

at last, wandering through Elegy,
the shining halls of Poetry -
built of silver bones and fundamental music -

sparkling dictionaries of Wonder,
luminescent Myth and Legend -
whispering polished figures like gold statues,

until a gas-lit room, mellow, wood-panelled,
smelling of bees and apples -
there a clutch of Old Fashioned Words

like threatened birds’ eggs
in a mahogany, Victorian windowed box;
and there it was, suddenly -

so shining still, no wonder it is holy;
under time-embroidered cobwebs,
silver yet, though dimmed with age -

‘GRACE’.

I cupped the word in both palms,
holding its calm golden light
like a dying September leaf -

dusted it down, tenderly,
polishing the word with my lips,
slotting it home in my heart

like a compatible disk –
shivering, whirring upload
as it was read - exactly, perfectly;

spreading through me like centuries
of matured autumn light, dimly
speckled with sparkling dust-stars,

low humming sounds of bee spirituals -
weary honey workers returning home,
worn, through a rusty gold evening.