Words - those nifty little creations of intellect. They rhyme, they explode, implode, elevate, embarass, express, soothe, rouse, arouse, calm.
Do I choose my words to define my thought or does the thought choose how it must be defined, from word to image to deed? How does my intellect choose my words to suit my moods? Does one ever get to a level of wisdom when one is immune from saying the wrong words?
My words are mostly poetry. It is how my thoughts arrange themselves.
But tonight, it will not be my words that I choose to start off this new voyage with. It is one of my all-time favorite poems by Al Zolynas, from his book The New Physics:
The Blessing
Lying on my stomach
in the backyard, my eyes
leave War and Peace, skip away
from lives more beautifully broken
than mine, fall on a dewdrop
hung in the shade of a blade of grass in the summer sun.
An insect--a kind of caterpillar--
no larger than a comma approaches,
his body folding and unfolding.
Under my nose, all of Mother Russia
and the drama of an insect and a drop of water.
My insect enters the dewdrop--
simply walks into it,for a few seconds a timeless bug in amber.
He comes out, glistening in the summer air.
The dewdrop remains as before,
pure and clear, a collector of light,
self-contained in its miraculous simplicity. . . .
As if in the old gypsy woman's tent,
after a few predictable cliches
about the future, after
you've paid her a handful of coins
and are rising to leave, she smiles
and passes her hand through the crystal ball.
Lying on my stomach in the grass,
I seem to be looking over my own shoulder,
watching myself watch myself
pass in and out of solid domes
of light, impossibly clear demi-worlds.
