I fall in love with words. And I’m pretty promiscuous about it — no single one holds my interest exclusively. I’m kind of a polygamous word lover, I guess. Much of my writing evolves out of word love affairs.

One that I love is noösphere. I love the idea of human knowledge changing the world — it’s pretty Buddhist, if you think about it. That what we know impacts the world around us, changes even the way things happen, how they evolve. Another reason for right action. 🙂

So today’s poem is an ode to a word, in its own odd way. I’m always hesitant to say what a poem is, because nothing is that simple. Like knowledge. Like Buddhism…

Noösphere ~

There is so little that I know for sure

The drawers in my head spill

Steampunk trivia, the welded artifacts

Of brassy surety and broken glass

Shards and diamante crystals

Of significance.

 

I could dress a storefront window

With the Thai silk I wore to a ball

My mother’s sequined shell, the scarlet

Feathers of a fan I never bought. No

Rhyme or reason, only the seasons

Of a curiousity.

 

If there is a boundary, a membrane

That surrounds the pulsing ectoplasm

Of the human heart, I have lived for years

On the other side of darkness. Sifting

With my greedy fingers through what

We cannot know or learn.

 

Loose pearls hide in the dark corners

Of a rosewood chest, remind me of daily pain

Someone told me would become

My strength. While the winter’s geese cut

The blue Oklahoma sky with their wings