It isn't always this or that,
a righteous yes or condemning no,
the good or rotten of many parts
or gluttonous whole of the ego--
it isn't a win or a lose, 
not this outing--it is not even a game.
This is an exchange of words,
a practice for mastery, of
certain endings, beginnings.
This can be a clarifying glass shared.
See the sunlight gilding the aged trees, 
the shadows of us made into giants--
these tell truths.
But this talk-- an ordinary parlance
a way to get through the thickets.

These uprooted words carried from valley to mountain:
they walk with us, hearty staffs to aid or trip us.
If I see two paths, you see one 
and whoever came this way
made another altogether
across a leaf-buried hillock.
Who can say which way, what word?
The walking makes more sense than 
the language cluttering its beauty.
 
What we think we know
might seem a lie tomorrow.
More fables to pass on.
Or talking is a flurry of 
spontaneous sound sculptures,
carved of arcane meanings, 
then captured in fired clay. 
Or it crumbles in the hands
and comes together for another
go, embedding a worry or
floating a need in a deep bowl. 
You tell me what words can become.

Conversation aplenty:
we are lately conduits of noise.
Talk can be so small, tinier than a briar.
It can neglect the honesty at heart
for the sake of a jab or more trickery;
it can displace the true path,
just like that--
the one that leads home.

What language can design,
then uphold a construct of love?
Speaking it does not make it so.
Mapping it out or insisting on it
does not make it clearer or stronger.
We must cast it, grow it, 
hold it, breathe it, give and
wholly risk it
either way the journey continues.