We are the Word

‘Heredity is a modifiable stored programme; metabolism a universal machine. The recipe that links them is a code, an abstract message that can be embodied in a chemical, physical or even immaterial form. Its secret is that it can cause itself to be replicated. Anything that can use the resources of the world to get copies of itself made is alive; the most likely form for such a things to take is a digital message – a number, a script or a word.’ Matt Ridley, Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters, Fourth Estate, 2000


We are the Word -

We are the Word -
poems called forth

from the mouth and hand
of black-masked nothing;

as stars shining somewhere -
existing invisibly behind light.


We are poems spoken

We are composed poems spoken
by the opening mouth of life -

the Alpha of star roots as mysterious
as imagined silence of stellar Omega.