The wolf circles back without leaving a trail

The tidewater swells in the Spring

The sun like sputtering flame yields to dark

The mockingbird chidingly sings

What passes for art is too often noise

And wisdom too often absurd

And what I learned from you I learned in a world without words.

The stars mark the hour notwithstanding the clock

The locust waits seventeen years

The shy crocus blooms when called forth from the snow

The willow she cries without tears

Two worlds in parallel hardly connect

Each to the other absurd

And since I met you I’ve discovered a world without words.

I used to think darkness a wasteland

And live for the first show of light

But you taught me to dance in the darkness

To speak the language of night.

©1993 Pamela Cardullo Ortiz