Your Words Reach Me

Your writings arrive, and I search,

Wondering who has appeared.

Is it the master builder,

Who mixes pitch perfect

Cadence with inexhaustible words,

Stirring in bright shards

Of fast flowing consciousness,

Creating aural walls

Atop we sit and savor

Vistas, thoughts dangling?

Or is it the fearless unveiler

Taking a deep breath,

Diving into a roiling maelstrom

Of unforgiving stark remembrance,

Staying down long enough

To retrieve a scroll of record

And to hold it before us

Until we succumb to truth?

Mired, as I am in the middle

Of detachment and observation,

I admire immersion in immediacy,

And how it diminishes the distance

Between you and what you write.

Arriving, your words gift me

Momentary illusion that I may

Someday be capable of the same.

Charles B. Neff

2/9/14