Word
Jan 22 2013

In the beginning
there was the word.
Earth
conjured from nothing,
as all of us are.

Heart thumping
like the pounding surf.
And after the first
few months
her voice booms
through amniotic fluid;
close as a whisper,
yet everywhere
at once.

First time ever
your name is said,
the movement of air, a sharing of breath
will accompany you
from birth, unto death.
But even slabs of granite
weather,
in the fullness of time
rubbed smooth.

You wonder
how that helpless baby
makes sense,
somehow comprehends
when words begin, and end
droning on.
The most intense listener
ever.

As when you say a word
out loud
over and over
until the sound becomes alien,
a strange intonation
in a foreign tongue,
detached
from meaning.
This elegant language
reduced
to jagged noise,
and you
regressed to infant.

How frightening, you think
to so easily tip
into speechlessness.
As if conceived
unfinished,
unable to talk
inaccessible thought
beyond desire, and need.
Locked in,
like a pent-up beast
prowling its cage
who cannot fathom freedom.

When the last speaker
passes on
the final word
will linger,
resonate, repeat
waiting to be received.
Expectantly suspended, diminuendo
in tenuous air.
Until it can be heard,
take
its meaning.