-As if I know. No-
not by my own leaky pen,
though
there are a soaring few
alphabetical alchemists
that throw in
words that are known to explode next
to each other;
elsewhere
you find fissions and contraries may agree
lilting toward lyricality and
honing in on homonymic epidemics.
True, virtues are silent.
You cannot walk these off.
And even then, some braver explorers
pillage the nether regions-
savages and murky poetry readers
mineralized and ossified, fumbling and
kneading to make meaning of it all
softer.
Those insatiable prose readers, of us
cannibal wordsmiths savorers
of acids and sugar
find balance
together.
Neutralized, sodium syllables
grounded us, home again.
The top spun itself
out and ungathered threads
out and ungathered threads
that make any thing,
more
more
True-
when the poem finds its own end.
Painting by Elihu Vedder [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.