Blue Jasmine

I used to know all the words

But now they’re all a jumble. They ran

Away so long ago, vanishing into paragraphs

And pages too sprawling and small to track or read.

Then it seemed the hieroglyphics exploded,

Leaving no syllables, no compound sounds—no meaning—

Just consonants and vowels, an alphabet where as pieces

From different puzzles no two could be

Tied, jointed, paired. In the end all one could do

Is make piles of them, a pre-adamic sorting

Based on size, color, character, awaiting the day

When language returns, the day God walks with us again

Through the garden, blessing an inflorescence of speech

And a fruitfulness of poetry by which we no longer stammer,

Gape, hungry for the well-spoken breath, but are sated,

Glutted with penetrating, uttered love,

A healing that soothes the soul’s desperation. Such

Longed-for and long-awaited messages are never

Negative but imbibed with peaceful potency that could last

A thousand years’ drought.

I am still in the desert.

I have been here a thousand years.

I have labored; piles stand.

I will wait another millennium for just one more word to come.

That word will be my last.