In Books
when words make love sentences are born
the world’s heft is altered by the weight of nouns;
a pause of hyphens and commas, like the space between breaths
tells the rhythm of what’s new and what’s been;
dead stops of periods spell the end of what a breath holds;
adjectives, like the blood blush of infants, color clauses;
articles wrap things in skin; pronouns,
unlike the particular names of beings, sometimes
identify the generalities of their forms by inclusion,
by saying, “We,” suggesting that mine and thine are one;
verbs are the darting eyes of life, the spastic gestures of infants,
the random smiles that pass in their faces suddenly uncalled for,
and of course the cautious steps of the old reaching for footholds
that once came naturally without thought,
too soon after the preface, amid
hints of epilogues
.
Jim Culleny
12/1/16