Evolving

All those As and B+'s did me in.

Rules like bricks upon rules. 

Six plus eight would always be fourteen,
Elegant in its way and rigid as the square of the hypotenuse,  
or the rote of presidents in order.
Knowing them all was plenty of nothing.

I mouthed the words by the dawn's early light, 

white with foam, my eyes saw the glory of the coming.

Like Vasco da Gama I explored 

and inched free by subtraction.

but the geography in my head 

was missing a hemisphere 

for which there is no syllogism or structural formula.

Slowly I heard sentences sprout, 

listened to orchid's tongues,  

the cello in a phrase, clash of cymbals in the oil slick.

I set sail inside the watermelon 

and parted the red sea.

Rafting down the river of tears, 

the smile of a gibbous moon,   

I own my blurts, first words, best words. 

I am bridging the hemispheres merging and emerging 

fluent in the lost language of reverence, 

of love aligned sufficient to surpass myself.

How sonnets have overthrown the eight + six 

yet every word from the heart is lyric 

and rhymes with itself. 

Through increments of teal this verdant life evolving,

the leaf, when fully evolved, is withered and gone.