For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice.
—T.S. Eliot, “Little Gidding”
So let me speak this year in leaf,
and let me speak in stem.
Give me photosynthetic nouns
and algal interjections.
Let my syntax be made of phloem,
let my phonemes be blades of grass.
May all my conjunctions produce oxygen
may my prepositions be moss.
And let me mostly listen
with ears attuned to soil and root
And when I have words, let them be living,
may only the kindest words bear fruit.