to turn /
to the sky, a sulphurous crest
of bird flight / the recursive
kernel
of a story in the making
to piece together, from effect to cause, from flight
to wing, a shutter of time, to now unwind
Newton’s watch, clouds rotating with the
swivel of fingertip, that kernel dropped
adopted by the loam, a line of code, a rogue
equation, numbers spiralling, the rapid dispersal
of roots, viral affects, shock of the soul
accumulating intensities, unpatterned
across hashtags / a convergence
of birds, in the expanding shape of a letter
code proliferating
a blink / of language / of
twittering
phosphorescent tendrils unrooted
flocks wheeling in the sky, no leader
no origin
of a story in the making
Paul Dawson’s first book of poems, Imagining Winter (2006), won the IP Picks Best Poetry Award. He teaches in the School of the Arts and Media at UNSW.