.......Sing The Truth Of Feral Bananas Poem by elysabeth faslund

I do not fear words. I fear meaning, meandering.
Moonlight is printed. Night burned with quotation marks.
They are mine. Owned in escrow of meaning.
This before that. The other, in lieu of...

What color sky, other than a word?
I touch the sky. Fingertips retain...print hues.
Tinted hues. Worded by fingertips.

I do not fear words.
I fear meaning touched by eyes, nestled by
Cupped hands.
I pour meaning down, away from me.

Words stand crutched. Pull crutches,
Words fall to print. Grovel in intermittent lines,
Periodically ending. Beginning. Pausing.
Refraining on, on, on. From.

Meaning closets itself, peeps through rusted keyholes.
Attains the other side through cracks in the door. Words.
Seeping. Misting. Watering arid passages
Never opened. What use?
No explanation. Lone tree, without confrontation
By forested phrases.
Forests open rustless, hingeless.

I limp with the staff of a pen. Mere pocks
On white pages.
Still, yet, forever, pathing words into trails.
And, limping along, reaching softly into
Forested dimness,
Always draw back meanings' blistered hands.

I do not fear doors, trees.
I fear the forest.