Even on the Greatest Subjects Too Much Can Be Said

Montaigne

You can oversell
the sea, say, or
the way we miss
the dead. The littlest
bit of absence excites
oceans. And of oceans
the less said the
better: the wet beyond
the land: we have a
built-in hair-trigger
primed to understand.

Credit

Copyright © 2024 by Kay Ryan. This poem was first printed in Revel, Issue 1 (Winter 2024). Published in a special arrangement with Revel by permission of the author and Grove Press.