Words fail.
Ask Borges. Or Shakespeare,
where a rose by any other name
would smell as sweet, Borges a writer
and philosopher who criticized
words as fictions.
We journey to childhood, advancing
this or that, trying to help having
experienced something.
We transfer what we know and experience
to others, try to help, use words—
Whatever we can to improve a world
that according to Lao Tzu:
cannot be improved.
Stop. Go. Love. Hate. Be you,
be truth. Be human, be all things
under the sun or rain to bend or
move with pain—
Be that rainbow after the rain, be the
sunshine filtering through Spring,
a bead of sweat from a good game.
Be alive.
Be dead, where sleep takes us away
hopefully when content with waking
life—we
did enough to feel peace of mind.
The “Devil” is a word, for me conjuring
total perfect evil, temptation, “sin” bringing
more words into a poem which celebrates
the absence of nothing, the need to need—
words failing time and again to say anything
the next generation can use, but still
they use us.
Trapped in words and freed by thought
we smile and return to innocence—if
for only a moment, because the complex
rhythm of words so juxtaposed on paper
or on stage—spoken against wind
through ears ring.
And the pulse shortens.
And we return to our child, the
Native American her home with
God and Nature, the Great Spirit
awakening when we decide to walk
instead of fly.
When we pray on grounds instead of
burning fuel from above.
When we accept the slow pace, as the
real pace, and see that we cannot
enjoy this thing if going too fast,
so hear a Jack Johnson record, slow
down everybody, dilly-dally with some
words, and
let’s pretend.
Bill Watkins, Traveling Poet 