I lay in bed, and this verse wrote itself. That’s how it felt. Ever feel that way when you’re producing something, like you’re a bystander? That’s how it feels to me but not very often. It’s not to say that what comes out is great, or even good, but there is a certain unique feeling. It feels like flow. Images flash across the space in my mind, and I reach for words. It never suffices, but I chance it anyway. Before writing this, I was thinking of how humans come into being and what it is exactly we are trying to reach, to fill.

For The Saying of It

A good heart for the feeling of it
A good voice for the saying of it
A good life for the living of a man
Cast down to soil and work and toil he never knew nothing of it
But the saying of it said it anyhow

Cast down he was for the saying of it
For the sake of other men
Like stones in a stream, they endured the lives of many
Over worn, left short, held loose, forlorn
Drowned, cast down as many had before

Unknown to them as others before cast down to soil
Nothing left of man nor woman for he knew not who he was
Never does, never cares, never who
Disappeared were they for less
Nothing more than living itself condemned a man to death

To return from whence cast down
For not a soul in a man can it live forever
Without a voice to say what it will
To kill or be killed
Whatever he will for that grand other speaks through him
unknown anyway

Unbeknownst to him, he lives in streams and in soil and underground
forever cast down
For the sake of a strong voice or a pound
For the saying of it
In the absence of a word he’d know all that he could know
And in the absence of knowledge, he’s unknown to the saying of it

With a voice like no other, cast down for the saying of it
The blessed word that gave birth to him so he could speak
In the depths of the cavern devoid of sound, there is his voice
Risen, cast down for the sake of it
He screams out in the night in the hope he’ll be found
But he’s not found

Profound
He’s cast down with a voice for the saying of it
And no one knows that he says a word
Not bad or good, just seeking the one cast out, cast down
Alone, never to be found.

© Larry G. Maguire 2019