You Noticed

There’s no wordless poem,
But you can call things
Without words themselves

Poetry, of course,
As much as you like.
Words naming wordless

Phenomena, real
Or word-imagined,
Was how poetry

Became possible.
You can still make poems
Of words from wordless

Inspirations. Trees,
Flowers, and the moon
Remain popular.

Or, here, you’re sitting
In long straw, winter
Grasses, at the base

Of a crumbling cliff,
Lots of wordlessness.
It occurs to you

The cliff marks the edge
Of huge lava flows
A long time ago,

This black terminus
Of basalt cobbles
That was once a wall

Of glowing, molten
Magma extruded
By careless physics

Burning, engulfing
The lives that couldn’t
Get away in time.

At last, it stopped, here,
Cooled into this cliff,
And slowly, slowly,

Life grew over it.
Now you sit below
Cold stones. Poetry.