Our Words Began the Imagination, by Karla Linn Merrifield

Our Words Began the Imagination
by Karla Linn Merrifield

of time, its construct of eons
and nanoseconds. Elasticity
sticks to my tongue and stretches
across your upper palate as we
attempt to pronounce the number
of hours to germinate the idea of love.

Likewise is distance reinvented
every instance your synapses
trick your lips into giving voice
to the exactitude of bird migration.
And my axons and my dendrites pulse
with the articulation of new latitudes.

At long last miles and years evaporate;
we are able to utter in unison: time is
the longest distance between two places,
two bodies and their minds. But with
practice we are able to sing a belief as do
peach-faced lovebirds — Agapornis roseicollis.

Karla Linn Merrifield has had 1000+ poems appear in dozens of journals and anthologies. She has 15 books to her credit. Following her 2018 Psyche’s Scroll (Poetry Box Select) is the full-length book Athabaskan Fractal: Poems of the Far North from Cirque Press. Her newest poetry collection, My Body the Guitar, recently nominated for the National Book Award, was inspired by famous guitarists and their guitars and published in December 2021 by Before Your Quiet Eyes Publications Holograph Series (Rochester, NY). She is a frequent contributor to The Songs of Eretz Poetry Review. Web site: https://www.karlalinnmerrifield.org/; blog at https://karlalinnmerrifeld.wordpress.com/; Tweet @LinnMerrifiel;

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