Foot In Your Mouth
FOOT IN YOUR MOUTH
If your childhood foot should always meet
Rocky shore or swelling sandy beach,
That textured strand remains in your feet
Lifelong, and in the rhythm your speech.
The flat stones become broad flat vowels,
The broken pebbles sharp-edged consonants :
Your foot in your mouth impels
You back to your origins.
Rocks shout proud above the incoming swell
Seeming to succumb to the rising water;
But this speech, the tide cannot quell.
The water recedes, the rocks reappear.
If a rock is removed by a sudden storm surge,
The water retains the pattern of its loss.
The swirls and eddies of the waves urge
The mouth’s sand to pitch and toss.
The rhythm is mometarily stopped, but the stones
Return faithfully without command
To echo themselves in exactly the same tones,
And repeat the music scales of the strand.
...................................................................................
Note:
It is easily possible to learn where a person is from by listening to his speech. Even travel and education do not disturb his long-term basic speech patterns.
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