Was with, is

A referential millennium,
the concordance reports,
of the word word in all
of its variations and shadings,
permutations and seeming
meanderings, not aimless though;
each reference its own poem
in the collected, edited volume,
a multitude on the hillside
to center on the one.

This is a great mystery,
this hovering over the deep,
the formless, this shaping
of creation, a speaking or
the speaking of the hidden
into the light, the non-existent
into the real. A word
once thought, once uttered,
once written and thus codified
becomes eternal.

This word was with;
this word is.

This poem is submitted for The High Calling’s Random Act of Poetry. To see other submitted poems on “what’s in a word,” please visit the site.

Photograph: Bible Text by Petr Kratochvil via Public Doman Pictures. Used with permission.