Photographing Words (Poetry)

I snapped the o of orange in the sky
before it changed or had a chance
to bleed away —
I caught its contours clear as day
unmistakeable and written bold
and then I shot a paler word
posing as a cloud
underlined in gold and strung
across the space between the fluid m —
the mauve ink flow of heathered hills.

The evening grew a poem, slow
as gathered thoughts —
line on misty dove-grey line
lightly out of focus and
patterned high with homeward flying birds
like random punctuation
scattered by the wind.