I dedicate this poetry shout-out to 3rd semester students at NEC- go get ’em and write on with your theses!
Vocabulary of Dearness
by Naomi Shihab Nye
How a single word
may shimmer and rise
off the page, a wafer of
syllabic light, a bulb
of glowing meaning,
whatever the word,
try “tempestuous” or “suffer,”
any word you have held
or traded so it lives a new life
the size of two worlds.
Say you carried it
up a hill and it helped you
move. Without this
the days would be thin sticks
thrown down in a clutter of leaves,
and where is the rake?