Forelock

Mane of a wild horse
blown by a canyon wind
rattling down the way; calm eyes
of the animal not frightened
by a mad woman’s ravings;
quiet talk in the shade of a tree
planted for such moments
by ancient hands; soft tenor voice
asking me “How does it begin,
these writings? Where does it
come from?” I had no answer
for the man with the horse’s
silver forelock, just silently
asked him to look into my heart.
                                        -- Ethel Mays

Words

Words, like stars 
linger above, offer a dream 
of unvarnished truth

        kismet
                and  moira

vie to make sense of gases collapsed 
into an endless static point 
upon which we may pirouette

                 perigee    or
         lunitidal

some word, please, to clarify
the force of our orbit, clouds wailing 
around our ragged chunk of dirt
	
          plagioclase	
                   or	sapience

give us a means to describe light
as it pushes up, shattering
reforms in infinite strands

          refractometry	      and	
                  fulgurate
	
a fusion of tongue more precise 
than the religious texts that send us 
hurling away from each other

          caritas	
	                 odyl

lexicon, help us to locate gravity, 
to converge upon ourselves, 
into meaning

   -this poem first appeared in 
    When The Muse Calls: Poems For The Creative Life, 
    an anthology edited by Kathryn Ridall.
                                        -- Kirsten Neff