Poet Marc Zegans is mourning for a spoken word.  The word wafts/ into the open air/drifts/ and then/no longer there…

Poet Marc Zegans.

requiem for a spoken word

it hung for a moment in air and echo
decayed into ambient hush, as the
next word was spoken, a noise overlaid
on the dwindling moment of meaning

this one word, from this one voice, held in this
one room, in front of this one audience
made of many faces and twice the ears
open, receptive, tympanic membranes

vibrating, sympatico with the song
so rapidly expired, a firefly
in sound, and yet its timbrel light lingered
in the note, in the color, in the heart

of one who unexpectedly opened
on its voicing, and now vulnerable
in this room of strangers, unconsciously
mourned its passing from air to memory.

marc zegans, april 2013

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