How is it that the kinship of words and emotions leads us
to birdsong and moonlight.
If I write
‘Birdsong’
what do you hear?

What moon?
Whose skin?
If you read the words
‘The cold light of the moon shone on her skin’
Is it not the same moon?
No.
Non.

I heard you were once a small child in a garden filled with flowers.
Were you there
Or only words in a verse?

The sadness overwhelms me and I long to drift away.
But is that poetry
Or just wishful thinking?
The abstraction of poetry only reveals itself in the emotional response of the reader.

Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.
And the dawn refuses to break
As my heart has broken
And that is not abstract
Nor poetry.