I'm so honoured to see one of my poems published in a new collection (edited by Elsa Hammond):
Here it is:
Intent on purple
Behold beautiful cyanidin
Bluish-red or reddish-blue?
A pigment bursting with pride in berries and leaves of Perilla
Marvel as atomic dances jolt
Production conveyer belts
While cellular rivers gush; serving up phenylalanine swirls
Sets of staple compounds stir and pour
From a parallel river
Malonyl coenzyme A floods all the micro tributaries
The compounds meet, intent on purple
An enzyme-controlled magic
Catalyses with creases while chalcones grow in aqua vessels
Their carbon spines form proto scaffolds
Witness the switch in bearing
When an isomerase works, naringenin is the blank result
Colourless molecules then colour
Magenta soaks the water
By successive redox steps; dihydrokaempferol forms with ease
There’s flavanone-3-hydroxylase
Seemingly aimed at tinting
Chemical dehydration finally gift wraps cyanidin
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