The Weight of Words  

Words are a net cast into the sea,  
dragging bright-scaled truths to light.  
Yet the sea itself slips through,  
its weightless immensity untamed,  
like a dream forgotten upon waking.  
 
A leaf, whole in its green perfection,  
unbroken by wind or insect,  
whispers of the storm-torn tree  
it fell from—a quiet proof of ruin.  
Here, even beauty bears the bruise of loss.  
 
Each vowel carries a pulse,  
a song strung from the open throat:  
“A” sprawls in sunlight,  
“O” mourns in its round, aching grief.  
Consonants grind like millstones,  
their edges sharp as the teeth  
that bite down on them,  
sinews taut with meaning.  
 
Once, I gathered words like wildflowers,  
learning their names,  
pressing their petals into memory.  
But now they blur with age,  
a garden overgrown, tangled,  
where I reach for a word  
only to find its ghost.  
 
The poet, hands dirtied with language,  
digs trenches through silence.  
Each line becomes a shallow grave  
for what cannot be saved.  
Yet amid the ash and corpse-smoke,  
fireweed blooms,  
an audacity of color,  
life rising defiantly from ruin.  
 
Poetry is the act of hauling stars  
into a net woven of frailty,  
or standing knee-deep in the flood,  
arms outstretched,  
trying to cradle the tide itself.  
 
Words—fickle, fleeting  
sometimes sharp as flint,  
sometimes soft as a whispered prayer,  
fail to hold the world entire.  
And yet they linger,  
like the morning-song of a Malabar Whistling,  
on a page where the bird has flown.  
 
Even as darkness deepens,  
we turn to them,  
press them to our lips like bread,  
believing—still  
that they might be enough.