From X-Peri

IF, AS HEIDEGGER SAYS,

Language is the house of being, where
do we put the mimes and their
dime store plastic flowers? What do we do
with the single-syllable words that are too small
to move into? Remember last week when
the mouse fell asleep in the backyard clover,
and the poet-composer warped the same thought
into seven kinds of flight? We climbed the ladder
of an ancient syntax and discovered
that the cathedral we were birthing had no
windows. Who will open the cages we’ve built
around ourselves? How will we capture
the slippery accents of home on someone
else’s tongue? If language is the house of being,
then being is the house of a little talking dove,
and the little talking dove is the house of a secret,
and the secret is the house of silence, and silence
is the house of dime store plastic flowers
and the two-story mouths that carry them.

© Melissa Studdard 2020