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A Fascination with Words
My father was an egghead Englishman
he wore the same tweedy jacket
at breakfast, Mondays boiled
Tuesdays scrambled. He left
cigarette smells in bathrooms,
completing crosswords while
we waited for his racking cough
that felled him in the end
He left me with his fascination
for words, I see him there
gripping his pencil, unorthodox
between index and ring, ashtray
nearby, writing always writing,
precise phrases crawling across
the pages like fast drying ants
We think in words, my father
said, without them there are
no thoughts, only pictures, like
cows whose world is only grass
and milk. All we build is made
from two and a half handfuls
of letters: edifices, devices to
probe the secrets of creation, to
flagellate each other, to pray and curse
They are our slaves yet they are too
our masters, we compose with them
as they compose us, they are our friends
our enemies, deceiving us into belief
they are all that exists. If only we
could see beyond to where true
wisdom hides, the place where
truth needs no pen to describe itself
So saying, my father placed a
nitroglycerin tablet under his
tongue, coughed his last cough,
his papers scattering across the floor.
He left behind mountains of words
impossible to read them all, so many
combinations of those twenty six,
yet when I think of him now
all I see are pictures, a breakfast
table, a bathroom door, a nicotine
stained finger, a graying mustache,
the wart on his left eyelid which lifted
as he sipped his Scotch
© Johnmichael Simon
2007
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