Words
In the beginning was the word,
was sky and stars along the void
like notes upon the scale.
The word was voice upon the air
that spoke the turning world.
In a mortal circle, scythe and blade
we plant and work the seed.
The spirit runs
through webs we touch:
filaments of your nerve to mine.
In gestures, love
we learn to speak
each radiant, varied as a word
joined in a phrase, seeking space,
the word becomes a world.
Robert McParland is the author of the novels The Last Alchemist and Shamrock and the non-fiction studies Beyond Gatsby: How Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Writers of the 1920s Shaped America, From Native Son to King’s Men: The Literary Landscape of the 1940s and The People We Meet in Stories.
