Song-like Language
Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem
A song-like language unsurprisingly
Has only partial overlap with tongues
Of spoken dictions. Tantalizingly
It comes from heart and not so much from lungs.
The whales and hummingbirds sing notes along
Two different ranges. Though the meanings drift
Through air and oceans, yet the form is song.
The whales call friends and lovers, lines that lift
Their messages beneath the waves so love
And amity reach out across the vast
Salt realms, and spread and woo and rise above
The shipwrecked. Music’s power is feelings massed.
Not so the weakness of the human phrase.
Birds melodies are more like veins ablaze.
~ Phillip Whidden