lyre

i want you to know
i am not bouncing sound off walls
echoes in chambers
or lyrebird calls
a parrot collecting
the sounds of the earth
and reflecting them all.
instead i am trying to start
a fire without a match
and no one taught me how to do that.
that i am thrown from ships
tired and trying not to slip down
in unnamed seas
but i still know where you're at.
what i want to say is
that i am somewhere in the depths
that when i tell you things
they are coming from my depths
that my voice is pure
and that it might be best
to mark my words.
because i am no kind of poet
and no kind of bird
i won't say i love you
because my love deserves
to hear sentences
that no one else has ever heard.


a.w.