STRIKE INTO IT UNASKED
Poetry’s “impulse, like electricity, crossing the space, leaves its signature.”
—W. S. Graham
No wonder that a flash of sparks
Spills out from what I touch—the LaserJet,
Brimming with static shock,
Suspends invisible electron-clouds
Across the laser-paper’s Radiant White
To print “The Windhover”
Electrostatically—
Hopkins’ creation-poem, spelled out
In powder-particle black sparks hard-hurled
From underlying fire—
The substrate of his poetry
The veiled fire of Christ,
Suffused, incarnate, metaphysical—
And poetry is where
A bird of prey is teetering
Among wind-angles
Intermittently, a fleckAmid cloud-rhythms, then
