I want to roll the words in the water
and turn them like glittering flakes in the pan.
They ought to sing and stomp,
to bite and scratch and snap.
Push in the spade and fling dirt in the air.
A fool tossing loam into the wind,
singing a round with voices in my head
makes a divine mess in my own heart.
From that mess sprouts words.
From those words I rake out lines,
sift through them, wash them
mold them into stanzas.
I hurl clods of language at the stars.
The wind plants them where they land.
Hoed, mowed, trampled and flattened,
they tumble down an ear.
Take them and shake them out,
to bite and scratch and snap
to sing and stomp
and roll in the pan like flakes of gold.
Lots of tweaks, adjustments and useful criticism from Kossack rubyr went into the making of this poem. Thank you, rubyr!