Today’s poem is from Earthly Matters: biology & geology poems, published by The Poets Union for National Science Week 2010.

Carol Jenkins

Pollen

Down-scale gene lifeboat, wind shifted silt,
nose teaser, sneeze bearer, deciduous dust,
anther emblem, furtive clinger, protein panicle,
bee money, corbicula cruiser
twitching yellow, gold-white and red dust

I love the mode of you

miniature lolly bag beauty, purveyor of fragrance,
haploid peddler of running tears, fertiliser,
petal stain, persistent infiltrator,
geologic indicia, independent gamete
that shivers flower quim to the base

I love the sex of you

thecal sleeper, totemic plant shadow,
Laib carpet, ubiquitous botanic ambassador
in topaz, yellow, persimmon and deep
dust of pinkness, diminutive deep grooved
grain with wrinkled rock melon coat

I love the art of you

baby cheezel, spiky mini-pod with
pores, nucleoli, cellulose thickening under
your intine clothed in a Jacobean exine coat,
palynologic mapper of fossil landscape
night rider of the western lyric

I love your logic

metronome of hay fever, wind strategist,
resister of decomposition, pack rat fossil,
paisley print meniscus pond patterner
lying as taxonomic code
in bog, fen, marsh and microscopic

I love the float,
the sink, the grit of you.