FULL MOON ON TOP OF A CHAMPAGNE PALM'S TIP

we did not chase the words for it
because it came first
the way we feel it is
and then the words begin to shape themselves
to fit
when we are filled to the brim we say the words
again and again
like the way rain is teaching us how to speak
about the sound and color of sorrow

those who hear us think that we are trained
for years and having done so
we have become some kind of rhetoric from books
but that is not so as we try to convince them
but they shake their heads and leave us
from where we started
we were paddles and then we become boats
and then we do not really know where to go
the land seems a miracle of a mirage
and then the words become us
now truer to their senses as we have learned
to speak the truth