#APoemADay – Day 17 – Word Seed

#APoemADay – Day 17 – Word Seed

A word can cut

Like a broken bottle

Thrown drunkenly

Into the listening ear

A word can splatter mud

And cast a shadow

Across a person’s name

Reputation and image

A word can curse,

Cast prejudicial slurs

And create constricting

Straightjackets of labelling

A word can liberate truths

Whose resonance echoes

Along the corridors of history

From generation to generation

A word can ignite passions

Powerful enough to melt hearts

And forge connections

That last for lifetimes

A word from the wise

Can pour healing into hearing

Invoking incandescent

Revelations and ecstasy

All this and more a word can do

Yet so often they are cast away

Like litter scattering shards

Of tittle tattle across screens

The fear of becoming present

To the presence within speech

Provokes retreat into a bubblegum

World of chewing and spitting cud

Every so often, a poet, prophet

Singer or wordsmith will sound

A word which sends peals

Of clarifying truth through the world

Then we hear with our hearts

We see, we recall

We remember that a word

Is a world unto itself

The potent word explodes

Like a seed into a tree

Networked intricately into

Life’s web of meanings