By M. Cynthia Cheung
When the first people
discovered words
in their heads, they
formed syllables
ready to grapple. Across
the plain they walked,
worked to loose
each word
from their slings
of their mouths.
They flung out
secrets,
a flail
of barbed sounds
seeking
warm, pulsing
places to land.
Threshed
in a sluice of sounds,
words began
to bear weight.
They made light
separate
from darkness.
They called it
good—by the
seventh day
God.
M. Cynthia Cheung is a practicing physician in the United States who also writes poetry.
