Ask a surgeon if a millimeter matters.
how the smallest measure marks
the difference between a heartbeat
and a silence that lasts forever.
I’ve seen you, poet, take joy in ambiguity,
in word bending, word twisting, word play.
“So many ways to do it right,” you say.
What if, for a day, you tried to speak
as impeccably as I measure?
What would be clearer? What
would be lost? What if you knew
only the most precise word
could save another’s light? Or your own?
You know it’s true because
words have saved you—
Think of Rilke. Neruda. Dickinson. Frost.
Precision matters. In poetry, too.
Even what’s free has a cost.
Oh friends, this poem that began just playing with metaphor got me really thinking… I love the way poems help us challenge what we think we know.