The seer is a sayer
By Mary Buchinger
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Emerson Fuller Thoreau
believed in the word
that the word the exact
the right word
could shape what was possible
they huddled together in Concord
at the Manse knee to knee
to ponder definitions like meteor:
A fiery or luminous body
or appearance flying or floating
Noah Webster’s 1828 dictionary
is shot-through with Calvinism
Susan Howe explains here
in the Divinity Chapel where
Emerson delivered his 1838
Commencement address:
speak the truth,
and all nature and all spirits
help you with unexpected furtherance
Howe recalls the fervor
of the Transcendentalists
their belief in the power
of the word
her definition of poetry:
love for felt fact and I feel called
home
the exact Word what
in the beginning was with
and what was – in roots
in etymology hope possible
wing and dwelling
Dickinson’s slant not
in the told
but in the telling
Copyright © 2021 by Mary Buchinger.