In the Beginning and Still...

After decades of scratching and tapping

letters on paper

    and launching verses

                from lips

and listening in the night

    for the infinite magical

                combinations

of which the human vocal chords,

jaw, teeth and face are capable,              

the poet finally enters

the central holy ground

 of language

understanding

that in the beginning

there most assuredly

was the word

              and the word really

was with God

               and the word actually

was God and is God.

It doesn’t matter what name, gender or genders

                we give the Creative Force

                --Yahweh, Vishnu, Allah, Jesus, Nature,

         even Laws of the Universe.

                                Truth is truth.

And the Truth is

everything is comprised

not of zeroes and one’s

       as the young masters of technology

would have it

or

               neutrinos, quarks

          protons, bosons

and such 

                    as the old masters of physics

                                would have it

but of vowels, consonants, clicks, pops,

syllables,

sibilance’s, suspirations, gutturals,

                glottal stops,

   and

 all the permutational possibilities

of syntax and grammar.

These make up the essence of

all things,

the irreducible

tightly wound  subatomic

 scrolls of sound

                rolling out of

                                  the dark seeds

                of the universe

                                       into

time, space and matter

--God’s original tongue

 made manifest

   everywhere

at once.

There may have been a beginning

but there will never be an end

because long after

man has come and gone

                spewing a language

                                        that has spiraled

                                further and further

from the first vocabulary

                                     God will still be speaking.

                                               

So now the poet

knows for certain

 the answer

to the age old

                                        tree-in-the-forest

                                conundrum.

If a tree falls in the forest

                and no human ear is present

there will be a sound

because the tree itself is a living tower of words

                  just as its tumble

is a cataclysmic poem,

    the leaf shower, the bird scatter

                        the tearing of the forest’s flesh

       --all part of a great epic

                                whose every utterance

God

is speaking,

                                                God is hearing

                                                     until

            silence

 and rest

               and the next

ecstatic rush.

C 2012 Bob Kamm