Translating the Grain

In the bone-still pause of morning frost,  

I mouth myself into the air’s steam,  

not words, but shapes from the gut.  

A furrow ploughed in the silence,  

I test its grip, the yielding soil,  

its syllables strong, knotted, coarse—  

what the throat knows before language.  

This is how we turn to light,  

how the unsaid finds its own tether,  

braiding thoughts tight into breath,  

each moment hoisting its grain skyward.  

Translation: the tongue’s hushed bankruptcy,  

a dialect of palms, clavicle, chest.  

Underneath, the loam holds its script,  

a damp hymn, the skin of seeds.  

We voice it: the unborn, the rooted.