Significant Others

We grow accustomed to ourselves

the way a plant gradually leans sun-ward,

for which a word was made – heliotropism.

We get used to the practice of words,

forget how each primal enunciation

wove a metaphor to hang in the mind’s atmosphere,

to stretch by like a shaft of sunlight embodied in dust motes.

I should hold off,

wait on the fruit of this afternoon

before speaking my mind.

Let’s sit, let’s let

the unspoken bud and blossom.

We are like a drop of sweat flung from summer’s brow, you and I,

slipping down the sky-to-earth arc of a blade of grass.

(composed for line-break workshop at Poet's House)