It hovers in dark corners
         before the lights are turned on,
          it shakes sleep from its eyes
                and drops from mushroom gills,
                     it explodes in the starry heads 
                of dandelions turned sages,
                                      it sticks to the wings of green angels
                                 that sail from the tops of maples.

          It sprouts in each occluded eye
of the many-eyed potato,
                       it lives in each earthworm segment
                                                       surviving cruelty,
              it is the motion that runs
                            from the eyes to the tail of a dog,
                                         it is the mouth that inflates the lungs
                                       of the child that has just been born.

                                                  It is the singular gift
      we cannot destroy in ourselves,
      the argument that refutes death,
        the genius that invents the future,
                                                all we know of God.

            It is the serum which makes us swear
                                               not to betray one another;
   it is this poem, trying to speak.