Words Don't Count

Words are not nails or pearls or drinking glasses full of milk

Words are not sails or the wind that fills them

Words are not eatable or bankable or capable

Of cooking dinner or putting a sandwich on the table.

Words are hot air, hisses, and lisps

Pushed by our lungs over our lips

Our tongues and our teeth get in the way

Turning the air into something we say

Words disappear as fast as we say them

And depend upon ears to validate them

And the printed page to illustrate them

And memory loss to eradicate them

Still, sometime, words are all we have

And they flow over doorways we build in our brain

Like cool breezes flowing

Over a transom

Like the sound of the moan of a far away train

The chill that raises the short hairs on my head

And the sounds of the night

As I lie in my bed.