Edward L. Wier

BEFORE WORDS

Before the captured words were ever heard,
When fresh, ripe thought hung silently at night;
Before the crystal mind was cracked and blurred,
By conscious blows of self-aware insight.
Before the chant or chatter of a voice,
When song was seed in the first virgin womb;
Before the fruitful garden of her choice,
With stems of green conception yet to bloom.
Before all tenses and semantic tools,
When sound and sense were on new wind and wave;
And graceful poetry moved through the pools,
Too sharp for signs to shadow or enslave.
As if an adjective, yet unemployed,
Was drifting through a living nounless void.

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