Thus do we all keep each other company

With shared words which are
the lash marks of life.

Some flow under street
noise, errant and erratic,
Karst by their nature,
dissolving and devolving
whatever innocence might
yet cling to them. 

Some are snow in streetlight,
or slow tongue twisted
around an emotion, early
morning, when sleep is
an alternate universe into
which everything reappears.

Some are the first star and last,
before lightening and rain meld
into fears and doubt.

Some are almost completed
thoughts on a new
avenue of paper, or the
computer thoroughfare, as
though, as though they might
be shaped into and iterated.

These words appear:
sometimes out of mystery,
the way streams will from
the mouths of caves;
the way change will
suddenly stampede across
dry veldt; the way panic will
gurgle from the terrain
of our lives, consume
and sculpt us into strangers,
recognizable only when we
struggle to communicate.


(The title is a quote by Sharon Olds, commenting on her poem, "Suddenly", written about poet Ruth Stone.)