other tongues …

A // W // F

I have spent my life in the company of those who like to talk about words. Their power (so they say) mightier than the sword.

But words are just one language, and — hear me — there are others.  

Ones I am just now beginning to learn…

15winter4

*

In the last light, I go walking down the road to the woods.

I shake the sun from my shoulders — watch it fall like glass prisms, shattering on the pavement.

(The light is only multiplied in the breaking.)

So I stand there in the circle of winking shards … and look up.

Open my arms.

Turn slow.

This — trust me — is language.

smallthing5

*

Then, too, there is the language of flowers.

Frost.

Sea-spray.

Stars.

There is the language of the shutter, opening to sun.  The language of paint sliding slow against canvas.  The dancer’s body, turning in a slow circle.

The language of skin.

*

So.

*

Feel my hands now, pulling you against me.

Feel my head tucked under your chin, my breath against your neck, my fingertips at your lips in the gesture of hush —

as we stand still — so still —

and the light rains down around us —

breaking…

*

*

*

breaking …

*

*

*

Oh, Love.  Put away your sword.  And just stand here with me, silent:

15winter2

… speaking. ❤

50 Comments

  4. So poetic and so true. You managed to describe something I think many of us feel naturally but can never quite put our finger on, at least that’s how I feel when I am enraptured by beauty and life. Thank you.

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      1. I find it great therapy in times of trouble. Watch that for a few minutes, and go away soothed. The difficult part is finding a birch tree… Not always available. 😉

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        1. I completely understand about the therapy part — I’m the same way about rivers, and forests, and mountains.

          Aren’t birches magical? Do you like the white birches, with their bone-white smooth bark, or do you remember river birches, with their papery ruffles all down the trunks?

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            1. Birches do have leaves like tiny mirrors! I had them behind my house when I lived in the New River Valley, and I always thought that Monet or one of the other Impressionists would have loved them — the way they made little flashes and flecks of sun, never the same moment-to-moment. Almost as if they were daring you to paint fast enough to catch the pictures they were making. 🙂

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  13. I had seen it. Is my memory playing tricks on me?
    I think those words were better reading them again.
    (Or maybe we/i got sidetracked by the birch/bouleau thing?)
    Or I shook my head and shoulders and the memories fell away?
    🙂

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