Wastral words, freely falling,
proliferate across the civic square—
each one a coin debased by minting,
spending itself before it’s there.
We talk and talk and fill the air
with syllables that cost us nothing,
the public tongue grown fat and dull,
its silences worth more than something.
What once was said with care and weight
now tumbles out, familiar, free—
a currency no longer backed
by thought, by blood, by what we’ve witnessed.
Speak less. Mean more. The word that waits
inside the throat, ungiven yet,
is richer than the thousand loosed
and already, mercifully, forgot.
Northcoast Antiquarian 