#Emergence

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.