I am a Poem

‘The suprising similarity of embyrological genes in worms, flies, chicks and people sings an eloquent song of common descent. The reason we know of this similarity is because DNA is a code written in a simple alphabet – a language. We compare the vocabulary of developmental genes and find the same words.’ Matt Ridley, Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters, Fourth Estate, 2000

‘Every original language near to its source is in itself the chaos of a cyclic poem: the copiousness of lexicography and the distinctions of grammar are the works of a later age, and are merely the catalogue and the form of the creations of Poetry.’ Defence of Poetry: Part First, Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1821

I am a poem

I am a poem:

the words of my life now printed
on this one page of the Universe -

speaking me in particular air,
among volumes of time, here.


I am a hymn:

singing of life, dust among stars,
how light entered into darkness -

my tuned notes,
skin, heart, eye;

a choir of molecules
in the Psalm of Earth.


I have heard the Word:

recognise its voice
in river, tree, bird -

the chemical sounds of me
being spoken in the world,

formulae of my body’s song,
open blue vowels of my eyes;

called by the Word,
still, which is life.