Sayings

As a research tool, the internet is quite useful, allowing fast access to information we may not ordinarily have. I came across a list of world sayings one day, some hillarious, others profound, but mostly they re-enforced the fact that people are basically the same no matter where or when we are in the world. One quote caught itself in the grey matter between my ears, took root and became a poem. It now lives in my new book, The Courtship of Reason. I thought I would share it with you now.

The Sound of Thoughts

The Vietnamese have a saying:
Child turns three,
whole house talks.
Don't we know
from our own silences
how words cushion echos,
that talk is marrow
to fill the hollows
of bones long buried, mute relics
of voices laid to quite.

*
Our speak was words like hunt
and death and sun, words lived
and ochered onto walls,
words too big to stay in our flesh.