You cannot get the word out: movie.
The noun is somehow heavy,
language lazy as love. You want to
move through maze of
mouth,
of tongue and teeth, saliva, syl-
lable, eye touching eye—to speak
the one word that wants to be said,
not because it is
important,
but because it is amazing to
be
able to be able to be able to
say what we know deep
in our oldest selves is possible
to be said—wonderful
to
state clearly without stutter or slur
mother or early or thunder or even
movie
when all is ripe for just that
very word.
And
it is hard tonight to watch
you struggle through that lonely stall where
phoneme and morpheme are in slow mo-
tion, where walls are dark membranes
and signals from shore are dull.
We cannot help, though we want to.
We too are afraid and feel alone,
but you must crawl
through
or swim through on your own.
We know no way to
help
you arrive at movie,
that suddenly lovely place,
you so hope to get to.