The Literary Trinity

‘[DNA] had first been isolated from the pus-soaked bandages of wounded soldiers…by a Swiss doctor named Friedrich Miescher. Miescher himself guessed that DNA might convey the hereditary messages ‘just as the words and concepts of all languages can find expression in 24-30 letters of the alphabet.’ But DNA had few fans; it was known to be a comparatively monotonous substance: how could it convey a message in just four varieties.’ Matt Ridley, Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters, Fourth Estate, 2000

“Each of the 30,000-100,000 genes is like a verse of the bible.” UK Scientist

The Literary Trinity

The Literary Trinity -
three letters forever

spelling life’s simple words;
from the magical incantation

of eyes - called from the workings
of light, yet coded under darkness;

psalm of the hand sung
as bone-star, blood-leaf.

Rhyming egg-shelled wing with sky,
dreaming man, feather mechanism -

all Earth’s products and volumes;
holy script writing sea into blood,

light into green, blue into water,
water into fish - tree, bird, man;

infinite literature of chemistry -
improbable art of the Universe.

*

I am written in the same three-letter
words as everything else alive –

my family inhabits Earth;
in their skin, fur - green.

*

The Word speaks
in the darkness -

poems come -
alchemising life

from love, letters -
intelligent chemicals.