To make life from their kin
And then more and more kin.
Will it work well this time,
For your life? Time will tell.
You might know if you’ve failed,
If you reel and fall. You
Won’t know if you’ve done well.
Lives will tell. Not yours, theirs.
This goes for words as well.
What worked well in the mouths
Of babes and crones and fools
Like us got said, passed down,
Still get said, still work well.
But life is long for art,
While change is swift as well.
A word like lox or eel
Could swim through tongues and live
And last and last and last,
Like the famed old eel trapped
In the well, like an olm,
Slow in the cave, not dead.
Or they can get snapped off
Like twigs in a hard frost,
Just like that, gone. And who
Knows where they came from, first,
Words like wells where cats drowned
Who glimpsed the ghost-like eel,
And did what works for cats,
Most times, but lost and fell?
And what of moths of thought
That thought they saw the moon
Gleam down in well’s wet roots?
As if words can have roots . . .
Cat-in-the-bag words. Thus
Hath the light singed the moth.
