Mot Bateaux

Chris Reilley for Bytesized Studios

I love words. Obviously. 

It is a poor poet indeed who does not thrill like a schoolgirl at a rock concert at each new word he learns. Every time I am exposed to a word I've never heard before, I pore over it, pinned to my wax slab, etymologically speaking.

Sometimes the words come fast and furious, bumbling over each in their rush to get the idea across. Anyone who has tried to have a conversation with a fourteen year old girl is familiar with the phenomena.

And sometimes they bump and sway, like boats in a harbor.

MOT BATEAUX

My words bump and jostle,
boats in an unruly harbor.

Creaky at some times, leaky at others,
often listing dangerously.

Language is a port for ‘ideas expressed’
holding exploration in each and every craft
that sets sail daily for far horizons.

The boats of thought are carried on breath,
tilting at fairwinds and gales alike,
defying the storms, and the odds,
finding wharf in clusters and groups,
strung together into ideas, jokes, dreams.

Yet the dinghies do not envy the cruise ships,
speeders do not condescend to rafts,
arks, barges and gondolas sail with the scow,
each carries the weight it was made for
In the style it has.

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Shared with those waterlogged DVerse Poets for Poetics.

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© Christopher Reilley 2010

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