Posted in Uncategorized, tagged communication, koi no yokan, language, poem, poetry, spaces on January 26, 2019| 2 Comments »
with thanks to JT
all day leapfrogging
from known to known to known
missing the feelings between the feelings—
ten thousand mysterious spaces
waiting for us to fall in
https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p05sn4xx/the-untranslatable-japanese-phrase-that-predicts-love
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged communication, language, light, poem, poetry, transformation on June 17, 2018| 2 Comments »
Just as the sun enters the room
and changes the feel, the warmth,
and the power to perceive,
the right word, too,
can be a beam, can shine
into an evening, bring
glimmer, tidings of light,
make even the darkest corners
shine. Yes even one word
can become a prayer,
a gate we pass through
to find ourselves luminous.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged language, night, poem, poetry on September 12, 2016| 1 Comment »
Even after everything is said
there is so much left unsaid.
I have measured the nights in stars
and lost track. I struggle to say
something true. When I stop
trying, I notice the how night
comes in and fills my throat.
Though no one can hear it,
it says everything I wish to say.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged language, love, poem, poetry on July 26, 2016| 2 Comments »
At the headwaters, the river
is mercilessly clear. Every rock
on the bottom is visible, magnified.
The fish must find shadows
or roots for hiding. I wonder
how it would be to speak so clearly—
a tongue so transparent
we might gaze into each other’s words
and see every color,
even the colors we would hide.
I want that, I say. A gray bird
sings in the spruce tree.
I cannot translate its song,
though it’s only several repeated notes.
This is how it is, sometimes,
even the simplest utterances
are impossible to decipher.
And now thunder. This language
arrives with its charge, its dark verb.
I tell myself I don’t want it.
Then it becomes my greatness.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged language, mothering, poem, poetry on May 24, 2016| 7 Comments »
We sometimes slip into w-wanguage,
a tongue my son invented, though no longer speaks.
My daughter and I are the two sole speakers
and we often find ourselves saying
What wa wabulous way, or
Womma, wan wi wease wave wore wapples?
The rules are simple.
We break them anyway,
forgetting to w or tripping over
our own expectations of how a word should sound.
In the end, the desire to speak clearly
and to be understood always wins.
Other times we’ll speak in nonsense syllables,
long strings of babble bellowed or crooned.
We’ll wave our hands, as if there is something
really at stake—like the desire to be understood.
Perhaps this is why whatever syllables
she utters, I will eventually echo them back,
stroking her hair, looking her right in the eye,
letting her know for certain
I know exactly what she means.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged language, love, poem, poetry, spring on April 18, 2016| 4 Comments »
Spring speaks a language
with only present progressive verbs—
just today as I walked into blue sky
turned blizzard, I attempted translations
into English with words such as flusterizing,
mirthing, tizzying, and unguarding,
but none of these seemed quite right.
As soon as I felt I had touched
something true, the moment
was already changed.
In Springese, there’s a word
that means both destroying
and flourishing. And another word
that means both grieving
and rejoicing. I felt my heart
leap up in glad recognition—so familiar
it is with unrepentant paradox
that the clumsy tongue can’t master.
They seemed to have a profound conversation,
my heart and spring, that my brain wanted
so much to decode. It could not,
but the snow was heavy and cold and wet
as it fell on my warming cheeks,
my rising chest, the greening grass.
And though it was clearly
inadequate, the brain settled
for this gloss, God, its so good,
so damned good to be alive.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged language, parenting, poem, poetry on September 5, 2014| 1 Comment »
She speaks in a secret language.
It is always made up on the spot.
She will look at me most sincerely
and say something she knows I’ll not
understand. But what pleasure when
I do. This time, she wants raspberries,
please. And I offer them. And then,
in plain English, she asks me,
surprised and slightly thrilled,
Mom, how’d you know what I mean?
And I respond in the secret language
only eyes can speak.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged language, mahogany, poem, poetry on July 30, 2014| 1 Comment »
Teach me, world, to speak
in mahogany—to begin
every word with a hum
and deliver each word
with a laugh and end every word
with the trust
that if it wanted to
the word could go on
forever.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bridge, language, love, poem, poetry on June 13, 2014| 2 Comments »
I whisper them in your ear before we sleep.
I say them because what I am trying to say
is that if you were on one side of the river and I
were on the other side, then I, although I
am an engineering dunce, would find a way
to build a bridge to you. And if the bridge fell apart,
then although I am a klutz, I would walk far upstream
and try to swim across the current, no matter how cold,
how murky. And if the water were too swift and it carried
me past you, well then, I would climb out and dry off
and recover and try again. And if by chance we found
ourselves on the same side of the river and it
was both marvelous and terribly hard, and
if I sometimes found myself wanting to build
a bridge to cross and get away, or found myself
wanting to just jump into the waves, well,
I wouldn’t. I would stay. But that is a whole lot to say
and not so easy to take in, so instead, for the sake
of simplicity and going to sleep, I just kiss you on the head
and whisper those three words.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged conversation, language, love, poem, poetry, silence on March 23, 2014| 9 Comments »
Speak to me soft
in a voice so low that I lean in,
and speak to me in idioms
of night. Let’s lose any lens
that condemns. Let’s forget
any tongues that speak in
blades or claws. Speak awe.
Speak yes. Speak song. Translate
my fear into tenderness.
Converse in amber.
Converse in ice melt clear.
Speak quietly. Speak near
in tones that I more feel
than hear. Speak broken.
Speak wing. Let’s mislay our will
to judge. Let us be uncaged, untethered,
let us be light, fluent in warmth
in greening, in spring. And let
us be lighter than that. And lighter.
Speak in nothing. In the morning,
let’s give everything away.
