Losing the Words
       

Wantons, they'd give themselves to anyone!

See how they slip in and out of one another's clothes?

How—dressed in zinnia-colored feathers, giggling—
they settle to the lip like birds, then flicker away?

Oh, they hide behind the roof of my mouth with flashlights,
cast firefly shadows on my stuttering tongue—

clash onto the stage and off, grinning madly—
above them that terrible sign: Exeunt Omnes.

For one clay all of them—
all the thousand thousand names of God—

will fall in love. Conjoin. Merge
into the unkempt darkness behind the stars.

They will be gone forever. Then silence
will enter the echoing chambers of my mind.

It will speak its name at last.
I will say Yes.

Tweet

Copyright © 2015 Ruth Thompson All rights reserved
from Crazing
Saddle Road Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission