The Next Word

Waiting for the next word

Clandestine or sweet

Plain and lovely

Brave, bold nonsense.

Love in a lantern?

Water is my favorite

Sweetly sweeping
clearly cleansing
too wild too deep

The darling of all metaphors.

Rocks, too.
Ancient and ever
Thoughts too heavy
and dreams that skip
and end up on dresser bureaus.

Windows
winter
clocks
and compass

Waiting, still.

Genius

Oh! How small
These Words that I pen
Will be to me soon
Will seem to me when
There's no Shadow on Moon
And Genius slips in.

Serendipity

Some of my best friends are words. Serendipity is among my favorites. I enjoy the way it slides across my tongue, leaps from the roof of my mouth and bounces off my lips, its syllables so succinct, so pithy, even as one runs into another. And I like what it implies. It’s a windfall when one loves both the sound and meaning of an utterance. How challenging to love words for their sound alone! Take juxtaposition. I admire that word for its audacity. I would use it often if only it didn’t machine-gun into the air, a reign of bullets, indiscriminate assaults on ignorant ears.