Poems

Imagine a rock-
smooth, larger than your fist, but smaller than a loaf of bread.
It has been sitting there,
the top of it exposed to the air and sun and wind for who knows how long.
Now imagine that there is something you want to say,
something you want to talk about,
but there is a word missing.
It's not just that you can't remember the word.
It is not even on the tip of your tongue,
because it is not on the tip of anywhere.
It is nowhere,
and you can’t find it because it has never been said, ever.
Imagine reaching out and turning over the rock.
Underneath the rock, the earth is pressed down,
but there are probably signs of life.
Little tunnels, possibly many miniature legs, running frantically.
If you are really lucky there might be the tiniest of snakes, coiled and sleeping.
(The snake, suddenly very cold, probably doesn’t feel so lucky.)
(And if you are afraid of snakes you probably don’t feel so lucky either.)
Sometimes a word comes, a new word,
never said before,
until you utter it to life.
It’s not that you invent the thing the word stands for.
On the contrary,
you forged the word because something existed that you wanted to address but couldn’t,
without using a clutch of other words to indicate the general direction you mean.
It is not unlike turning over a rock.
The underbelly of the rock was there all the time, alive and unnoticed.
And now that you’ve met the space it occupies
the universe has grown a tiny bit.
Now your brain has the underneath of a rock
embossed in the collection of things that possibly are.
Once a word is born, its place can never be unmade.
Even if no one but you ever says it,
the universe has grown a tiny bit
and anything could happen upon that fresh ground.
What about the rock then?
You might carefully replace what you moved
so that the creatures underneath can continue quietly existing.
Or leave it unturned to let the sun touch the underbelly.
Or replace it, but leave just a sliver of bare earth exposed.
Or replace it, but return every once in awhile to peek underneath it again.
Or go inside and write a poem about what was beneath, coiled and beautiful,
naming it with a new word that wasn’t there,
before you turned it over.