The Dangers of Talking and Thinking

It may glide lithe in a silken dress
of eloquence, this chatty seduction,
monologue or dialogue. It grows ever more
intimate, it turns into a lover, a spouse,
and you travel with it everywhere.
Sometimes an exciting enchantment.
Sometimes a complaining crone.
It sometimes states how beautiful you are,
how successful, how far you yet may go,
sometimes underscores your lack,
how little you are or how little you know.
It’s a fashioning, re-fashioning of the past,
an imagining of the future furthering fear,
feeding desires and aversions alike.
Its dress is like a billowing, tropical rain
that swells the forest of concepts, images,
the self-image of who one is or yet could be
or who one was. Let pass the would-be
seduction, and no forest, no beast can be,
joy ever more rarefied, more luminous
in light of silence, mother of insight
and timely actions. Let spaces grow vaster
than speech, the speech to the point and spare.
You’ll find fulfillment and delight
quite naturally are already there.

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