story to me

I'm not that good with words anymore. Used to be I was a word wrangler, a poet, a story finder... Sometimes the words would flow into songs or the songs would flow beyond words. I was quiet enough to keep words edging in, leaning across to hear what I'd say. And the words would stay with me.  Had them in my pocket and i could take them out and fashion them into something good enought to eat. I could use words to warm up the house until the windows, all blue with winter, would steam up and paint themselves in pictures, inspired by words.

But like the houses they make now, I got too insulated. I got satisfied. Words don't like that. They like to be courted with a place in the heart that isn't full of anything, a place they can fit themselves and cozy down to stay. Some words like an edge to walk, like to look down the sides of steep stone ledges into possibilities of something ancient. They'll take chances to reach that something. If they dash themselves on the sides of stone, they don't care. Bleeding words are sometimes the loveliest of all. They can bring the ache back that you thought you'd laid by.

But my words got all sunny. Sunny words are halved. They need shadows. They need depth. A good word hates getting explained all over the place, hates having reason shoved at them. Once you start looking for answers, words get shy. Well, no, looking is alright. Finding, though... what's the need of a word if you've already found a sentence, a paragraph. And you can see how the magic slides right out of that.

I recall words, though. On the other side of things, just out of reach -- ah, the best words are those ... almost.

There are words you can only get to through music or dance or art. A word like that fashions itself into a story all curving lines and resting places. Life force seeps out of the image of a note of a song that has no words. It's all one word.

I've used my words until they're wan and wasted. Fragment. Moon. Woodsmoke. November. Magic.  Those are the words in everything that I think. I don't leave home without them. Home. That's another one.

Story to me with words that hold a night so dark, and a landscape so wide, nothing will disturb it until dawn. Walking in spaces where anything can be, where words spoken, sung, shouted, laughed, wailed and whispered; words formed without sound, by the ancestors we were some old time long gone, in foggy mornings and rain logged days, in crumpled snow tossed pathways we half remember, half rise again to surface in a story.

Ole Goddess, Saga, reaches in her pocket and finds word dust and sprinkles it all through the rest of November. A hundred writers see footsteps in snow, see wind ravens in bare tree branches, see fire at the shoreline of a dark ocean, see mountains where clouds billow and wind wails.

We lean in close to catch the last words, say the wrong words, regret a word left unsaid and one taken wrong. We find the right word, record the first word, exchange words, and send word.

It's all story.  As long as we all get it wrong sometimes we get new words. If we got it right, we wouldn't speak, there'd be no story.

In the beginning was the word ...