The Language of Riddles

Who provides the soundtrack
when the film ends,
when life is a series of missteps
made in solitude?

Who sings to you
(of love, mostly of all)?
Who puts wings on words
and conjures crows?
Who opens the day with robinsong?

Who walks with you like the wind,
rustlesoft through trees?
Who tells you that you are and are
beyond what you yourself can see?

Who puts your name in a sentence
with a smile, sailing it
on the rippled paths of rivers?
Who tells you what you could be
instead of what you are not?

Who gives you each day
as a gift meant to be shared?
Who reflects your eyes into the vast
silent sky and never questions
the validity of their light?

Who holds you together
and echos your voice across the void,
vibrating through your bones
until they are centered
in its starstrewn tides?

Who hums you the moon?
Who is always waiting no matter
where you go or what you do
to welcome everything about you
home?

For earthweal, where Brendan poses the question: What is this wild language in the deep forest back of our mouths? Mine is evidently riddled with more questions.

32 thoughts on “The Language of Riddles”

      1. You’re welcome. I look at one as an individual in the context of their relationship with the cosmos. If we are able to love and accept ourselves, all aspects, we are able to embrace everything within the cosmos as well — and it will embrace us in return. It’s an ideal to strive for, but the striving itself suggests we aren’t enough as-is…

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  4. I read this with bated breath, wanting the answer. We always want it to be person, but I think, if the answer is ever a single person, they are just reflecting truly what was intended by life, nature, what’s all around us.
    The image says it all, could be a human thorax, lungs full of life, an insect face, a bird’s spread wings, a wolf, dawn, the bottom of the ocean, ghosts, a watchful forest…

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    1. That’s exactly right Jane. What single entity could supply it all? We want all these things, but we also need to remember our part to play in giving some of them back. It’s all connected.

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  5. Asking the right questions is almost as important as finding the right answers–to me this shows the interrelationships of self with so many things, corporeal and elusively of the spirit…in the end, perhaps our deepest and truest selves supply the answers, if we listen properly. A thoughtful and compelling poem, K. Sorry you are having trouble at my site—you aren’t alone; word press now is very fussy about accepting the log in and password I must supply every single time I comment at a wp site and sometimes it won’t let me play either, tho I’ve not had trouble here.

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    1. Thanks H. The questions are key. Sometimes we don’t even need the answers if we have the right questions.

      I’m having trouble randomly. Incognito worked for your site and few others, but not every one. And it’s also making me sign in, even to my own site! I wonder what change was made in the programming. Probably they don’t even know.

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  6. Who indeed? Beautifully done–this calling of questions into the universe. I think Jane is right that it couldn’t be one person or thing that answers these questions. But also, I think it probably changes over time–questions and longed-for answers.

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  8. This poem is a glorious compilation of all that is wonderful. Sigh. I especially love “Who puts wings on words and conjures crows? Who opens the day with robinsong? Who walks with you like the wind,
    rustlesoft through trees? Who tells you that you are and are beyond what you yourself can see?” Absolutely wonderful. My favourite of yours, I think.

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  9. Gorgeous! I knew the truth of each question, and intend to grow into an answer or two. Meanwhile, it is enough to be aeware and at times to participate in the sounds and the gifts and life. Oh yes! Each question is an acknowledgement and an invitation and a celebration.

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  11. I guess I would have to answer that many days at present the one who signals to me that I am alive is my deeper inner self. Or maybe , on some non verbal level it is the objects in the house and the plants in the garden. (I’m staying home a lot because we having an Omicron wave here). Then again, I re-read your poem and looked at the art work more deeply. Maybe it is creative expression that signals to me that I am alive.

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    1. I hadn’t thought of creative expression, but that’s absolutely an answer. I think the answer is always changing as well.
      We are having another wave here, but no one seems to care. I continue to be careful though.

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  13. I once (thought I) knew. no longer. but that’s ok. as Jane and you noted, it’s not really about the “me” or “you”, more about the all of us.

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