Some mornings I drive to the duck pond
instead of writing poems. I can’t remember
how to keep words coupled to the truth.
So much lying has torn words loose
from what they stood for. Remember,
back when we agreed on their meanings?
I’d say honey for instance, and you could
taste it. Once you said freedom
and I saw doves rising from your shoulders.
We shared language so we were not alone.
We both loved words as if we could see them:
like ducks bobbing on a pond, dipping,
scooping, swabbing insects from the air.
Now they paddle among decoys.
I can’t always tell which is which. I promise
sometimes signifies I never said. No
means always; giving means taking.
I try to keep the word outrage on a leash
like an obedient pit bull. Then one day
I answer a call: Baylor Correctional Facility
for Women. Yes, I will teach your ladies. I will
offer them the extreme weapon, language,
how to write themselves out of their procedural cold cells,
into some human truth they know but can’t yet
say. I drive by the Friend’s Meeting House,
reading the sign: Let us see what love will do.
Jeanne Murray Walker is the award-winning author of 10 volumes of poetry, including her most recent, Pilgrim, You Find the Path by Walking. She lives in Merion Station, Pa.
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