Kotodama, the word spirit

 

In the midst of an argument
about the noisy neighbour,
“Every being has a spirit”, you say.
A tree, a leaf, a rabbit, a raccoon,
and so it goes
that objects too have spirits,
the sagging carton that carried my books
across two oceans and a couple of seas,
the old ceramic pot with the brown-green glaze
chipped at the rim
revealing a little of its coarse white inside,
Grandpa’s rocking chair with the bamboo weave
split wide in the centre of the seat.
 
What about words, yours and mine,
sounds that can soften stones,
make rain, river the fields and harvest the grain.
Mustn’t words too carry the burden
of a future, as yet unborn?

And so, I scream here,
the sounds that carry the spirits
to hold together,
to sing, to make,
to birth, to chant
the many names
of love.
 
 
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Kotodama – 言霊（Japanese）－the mysterious power of words to alter reality (from Shintoism)