Be careful of words, even the miraculous ones...

I've been logging long, bleak hours at the 'puter. This morning, I'm like a bat out of hell starving and devouring words that hold feelings or dissect them or stick them up to the light to see if they change colour.

All week I have worked at words that hunker down into flat opaqueness.

So I did what I usually do and turned to Jeanette Winterson's collection of poems and was rewarded with Anne Sexton's brilliant poem on words. Sexton was a troubled woman by all accounts. She killed herself in her late 40s after having won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry.

This is a photograph of the luminous Ms Sexton whose words encapsulate everything -- from the trickery of words themselves to the seductions of suicide.

(Readers: Please don't worry. Reportergirl is not suicidal. She is possessed of an inherent silliness that cancels out any potential for self-harm or annihilation)

Words

Be careful of words,
even the miraculous ones.
For the miraculous ones we do our best,
sometimes they swarm like insects
and leave not a sting but a kiss.
They can be good as fingers.
They can be trusty as the rock
you stick your bottom on.
But they can be both daisies and bruises.

Yet I am in love with words.
They are doves falling out of the ceiling.
They are six holy oranges sitting in my lap.
They are the trees, the legs of summer,
and the sun, its passionate face.

Yet often they fail me.
I have so much I want to say,
so many stories, images, proverbs, etc.
But the words aren't good enough,
the wrong ones kiss me.
Sometimes I fly like an eagle
but with the wings of a wren.

But I try to take care
and be gentle to them.
Words and eggs must be handled with care.
Once broken they are impossible
things to repair.