WORDS

WORDS

What can I say to you
that has not already
been revealed in these tiles,
scattered in magnetic profusion
on the face of my cold, flat life?

Honestly, if I could write to you
without words - I’d do it.

What words can give you back that morning,
when you ran to the top of the mountain
to see a red tail hawk resting in a chestnut tree.
Yes, I saw you running, your hair
a silky river streaming behind you.

If I had words to send you, I would want
you to swallow them like a tonic,
because I know, they would be potent.

But my words lay hidden, like onionskin eggs
placed in cold clumps of new, spring grass –
wizened eggs, petrified now,
in their waiting to be found and counted.

Back when our days belonged only to us,
my lips gave the trees permission to whisper
our names to the larks winging overhead.

And now,
now a silence of words gathers at the rim of
my life and prevents me from saying all those
things that I should have said years and years ago.

Words…
written, spoken,
lost, broken.