Here I am, suspended breathless
between language and myth.
Strands of undomesticated words
weave ladders to freedom, and

a dove in the stripy-barked birch
recites the works of Homer.
I found the rules of grammar
written on my tongue by the wind

and the alphabet strung like
seed-pearls around my willing neck.
Each day I take to the quarries,
hard mining for the sweetly lyrical,

blistered from digging in hot sands
and hard stone for parables.
The very walls that bound my heart
are fairly breached by the

gentle solace of poems spun
on a vision quest, on toiling
though the hill country of
my youthful and once indomitable

dreams: like dandelion fluff,
I blow them into history.
I write as though poetry is
the only real nourishment –
. . . . . .  .perhaps it is.

© 2016, poem, Jamie Dedes, All rights reserved,  Photo ~ courtesy of morgueFile