When you as a child learned to speak,
It’s not that you didn’t know words—

It’s that, from the centuries, you knew so many,
And it’s hard to choose the words that will be your own.

—Alberto Rios, from “A House Called Tomorrow”

•••

This, then, is the challenge,
sorting through a long-acquired vocabulary

of word leaves, seemingly millions,
some tiny and greening, new-to-us words,

some thriving and hearty, leaves big as
bread plates, vein-threaded as a human heart,

and many, many brittle and fallen,
crunchy and stepped on, gone.

It’s the gone I fret over, the ones
that leave before I want them to.

The unkind words shouted in anger,
the frosty words of aftermath—

those I’m happy to see fall, the unwanted
detritus, happy to rake them into big piles

and plop them in the big green bin to be
carted away. But that word there, the one

nowhere near the tip of my tongue,
likely lingering near my spleen, the one

I can’t bring to my lips or to the page
when I want it—those are the ones

I worry about, the ones I mourn. When
did these words leave? Might they return?

And if they don’t, do I have enough for
the rest of this existence to see me through,

to speak, to snatch as they drift by
and set them lightly down on a page

like this one right here?