These words. Those words. Today’s words and yesterday’s. The same words, and different words. Words that meant the same and words that meant differently. Words that time altered, words that altered time. Words that changed tense and became the past. Words that remain and will not change. Ever. Such words. Such meanings. Everything changes with some words. Other words change nothing.

I have been gone. But in truth I have not been gone. Because I have not been seen here, in this space, does not mean I have not been here, in this space and elsewhere. Not everything needs manifest itself. What cannot be seen, or heard, or felt, or smelled, or sensed is not necessarily not there anymore. Water warbles. Air hangs. Clouds that seem still are coasting the skies at speeds we cannot imagine. Fire does not often burn. Ash isn’t all ash. It is what once was. Things are what they are. Things are also what they do not appear to be. I have been here even when gone. Hello, how have you been? Never mind, let’s get on with it in ways it is possible to get on.

I was with words. Spoken. Written. Unspoken. Unwritten. Hinged words and words unhinged. Words that made sense when they were spoken or written in a kind of sequence that made them understandable words. Words that were disjointed and either at war with each other or in refusal of company, words that made sense on their own, but no sense together. It has been that sort of time. It is possible that words no longer mean to us what they meant to us in an earlier time. Words like “we”. Who are we, and what do we mean when we say we? And what are those “we” things that we used in the sentence preceding this one? Is there a “we”? Is that the same old we? Or is there a new “we” that does not mean the “we” that we might mean it to be? And who are we in the first place? We are not what we used to be. We want to be a new we, and we are not quite agreed on what that new we should look and feel like and who should be part of that we and who should not.

I have been trying to put that down on paper, and I have come close to concluding that I do not have the word, or words, for it. I have been trying. I have been on the job, scribbling. That may not mean a thing, being on the job. So many people are on the job and the job isn’t getting done. Being on the job is not the same as doing the job.

And so begins another one

Behold another year

There’s yet to do, it’s not all done

Listening to words I’ll never hear.