A Poem: Every Word Matters

Lovers could tell you how
every word matters.

We might stand two feet apart
and words fall down,
lost off the tongue.

We would wish them to be arrows
that find a home.

Lovers could tell you
how every touch feels like the press
of a hard consonant,
a soft ‘o…’,
a connecting vowel.

Lovers could tell you
that touch needs not words.
That words themselves cannot stand up
to touch and her eloquence.

That there are not words yet
discovered
for everything touch might express
and does.

Lovers can tell you that words fall down
and yet somehow still bridge a gap.

Lovers can tell you words are clothes
until they reach the heart,
shed their garments.

And lovers will testify
to touch as a thunderbolt,
or a cool stream,
assuaging longing.

Will confirm
touch as everything needed,
until words define.

Tell the story.
Draw the boundaries.
Map the shape of things.

Touch without words, to the lover,
loses oxygen.
Together with words,
starts a fire.

Ana Lisa de Jong
Living Tree Poetry
November 2022