Losing the Words

Another poem from Crazing. Recorded at a delightful reading on June 13th at the Hilo Public Library.

Losing the Words

Wantons, they’d give themselves to anyone!
See how they slip in and out of one another’s clothes?

How—dressed in zinnia-colored feathers, giggling—
they settle to the lip like birds, then flicker away?

Oh, they hide behind the roof of my mouth with flashlights,
cast firefly shadows on my stuttering tongue—

dash onto the stage and off, grinning madly—
above them that terrible sign: Exeunt Omnes.

For one day all of them—
all the thousand thousand names of God—

will fall in love. Conjoin. Merge
into the unkempt darkness behind the stars.

They will be gone forever. Then silence
will enter the echoing chambers of my mind.

It will speak its name at last.
I will say Yes.