When Words Found Me

For Mr. Johns, who taught me well.

A love of words
rooted deep in me
I close my eyes—
and yet I see
a song, a stanza
strung carefully
to where
ink and page collide.

Prose and sonnet,
verse and rhyme,
found me young—
their storylines
read aloud in rooms
that held their time,
seeds sown
for later years.

Paper-etched verse
and spoken word,
the finest sounds
my listening heard—
what some might pass
as slightly blurred,
rang ever-clear to me.

Frost and Poe,
Thoreau’s calm pond,
Whitman’s leaves,
the mind walks on
all stirred the day
from bell to bell
like summer air
swirling well.

Those halls still echo—
and in their sound
I learned which voices
gather round:
some stones remain,
alone, unbound;
but words
like birds—
of a feather
flock closer strewn together.

©Todd Layton Eckard