Eighty-Nine Words for Snow

Every once in a while, someone
Wets themselves all over again
About a language that’s missing

An equivalent for some term
Common in the more common tongues—
A language without, say, colors

Or numbers or a word for time,
A future tense, a word for no.
Then the tussle starts all over,

As to what this might mean for thought.
Are the concepts themselves past reach
For the monolingual speakers

Of those languages? Or are they
Merely awkward, unfamiliar?
Or are the concepts still in play

But needing clusters of phrases
To express them? Does no one
Ask themselves the question—what if

The presence of terms misleads us?
What if terms suggest that concepts
Exist that don’t exist at all?

You’re fooled in that you think of snow.
Colors aren’t there. Nor are numbers.
There’s no time, no future, no no.