Word

          Word is hello, is house,
          The arrival in the ride.
          It is the root that grows,
          The uttered oath, the bride
          Beside, before the altar,
          Before decisions falter.

          Word is the inside-out
          Of loneliness’s pillow,
          The certainty of doubt,
          A shimmer on a billow
          At the horizon’s edge
          Beyond the garden hedge.

          Word is white before
          Its colors can begin
          To chronicle its lore.
          It speaks our speaking: in
          The beginning was the word,
          It’s what the silence heard.

          Word, in time, we break
          Or give, spread or keep.
          It may ring true when fake,
          Taken on faith, asleep.
          Adam and Eve would fault
          A word for their lost gestalt.

          Word is the tongue on watch
          For what might crack the crust,
          The thumbprint ash, the blotch
          On a brow, forecast of dust.
          Its breath is what engenders
          Breath in the earth it renders.

          It is the code of law
          That conquers kings with a sword
          Too fine for shock and awe.
          A spaceship carries word
          In a time capsule. Its nib
          Is the point of Adam’s rib.

Andrew Frisardi’s most recent books, both published in 2020, are The Harvest and the Lamp and Love’s Scribe: Reading Dante in the Book of Creation.

Founded in 1957 by the great Russell Kirk, Modern Age is the forum for stimulating debate and discussion of the most important ideas of concern to conservatives of all stripes. It plays a vital role in these contentious, confusing times by applying timeless principles to the specific conditions and crises of our age—to what Kirk, in the inaugural issue, called “the great moral and social and political and economic and literary questions of the hour.”