First of the Jubilee Year Sonnets

On Thought

The weight of our most cherished secret thought might be
As light as mist, or cuckoo's song draped round a tree.
Thought has no form, heft, no breadth, no light or dark;
We cannot hold a thought within our fingers' grasp
Or see it, though it may shake us with truth so stark.
No matter how an idea holds our heart in its clasp
Thought lives without proof, in faith, unbound in our hearts
And cannot be proved without a mortician's arts:
Thought spoken, written, is embalmed as word. Consumed,
Dead ink on paper, or binary byte: exhumed,
And read, dead to change, static words from start to send.
Listener or reader must on fair thought depend:
What you write, I read, then even love you I might,
Yet my love not be proved until I speak or write.