Ask Their Graveyards and Their Enemies

Do you carry the falling
With you, do you? Words work hard,
Down to their orthography,

Phonemes, small flicks of the wrist,
To keep and carry meaning
That has to be brought to them.

People used to writing words,
To composing knotted strings,
Sometimes confuse bridge and kite,

After the kite carried string
That was tied to thicker string
And that to heavier cords,

Until a bridge roped across.
The kite was never a bridge.
A bridge is no kind of kite.

Wait, what happened to the string?
In the burial mounds, fine
Gold, felt, leather, decoupage,

But no strings coiled to tell you
What that world was all about,
No strings, no bridges, no kites.