Words

Not too long ago, while walking home from school in the early evening, just when the several clouds in the sky begin to color, I noticed a handful of birds sporting about underneath some dusty green bushes by the local senior center. At the time, something like the phrase "a sprinkling of birds, like handfuls of sugar tossed carelessly from..." jumped into my mind as a potential beginning for a poem; but while I thought about the words, the birds, and that particular metaphor for a couple of days, I didn't commit anything to paper (or screen). Shortly afterwards, I realized that I was equally affected by the words (their sounds and images) and the feeling of satisfaction that they gave me - like having just completed a delicious meal - as I was with the actual sight of the little guys peeping around and popping up and down in bark dust. Maybe I've gone off the deep end, but I think that my relationship with words and language is going through some minor transformation, to the point where I sometimes turn on the close captioning to my television, so I can continue to read even as I watch television. Of course writing all of this just now has made me realize something else - I must be the biggest nerd on the planet earth.