Bathed In Words

 I’ve been bathed in words.

Surrounded and covered

with all their meaning,

fed and nourished on sound.

From my earliest days

I have escaped into pages

which have led me out of

the chaos and turmoil of

what we called home.

Words have always lifted

me above the fray of human

suffering and angst and into

a world of adventure and 

delight.  The Scholastic

Book Fairs and the Weekly

Readers were in league 

with the library to form

the essential cartographic

tools I would need to craft

the maps and take to flight.

Words are the key for any

one individual to gain the 

understanding to be set free;

if not in truth than in point

of fact for their own self.

I am broken by the cheapening

of words I see afoot these days.

Words use to malign and destroy

and not to open us to grandeur.

The silence of the Meetinghouse

has burned the worth of words

into the cells I bear each day.  “I

hear an echo in my soul, how can

I keep from singing”, or speaking,

signing, or gesturing to those near

by who need a word of comfort

and repair.  Words.  Words.  Words.

Such a cascade of loveliness and

kismet is possible on opening each

new book; such a hope and exhilaration 

with each new journal.  “Moby Dick”

the first novel I read in third grade still

portends the rise of hairs on my neck

at the sound of “Call me Ishmael.”

The names De Soto, De Leon, Crockett, 

and Boone presage a richness of desire 

for new lands and exploration.

I’ve been bathed in words and “THAT 

HAS MADE ALL THE DIFFERENCE.”