but we are climbers & lovers of heights

I wrote this several months ago, and it's lived quietly on my iPad ever since. I keep thinking that I've posted it already, and then I keep not. But I decided today's the day. It's written with a friend in mind, though it's as much about me, about my LPSP05 team, about anyone. 

She says she feels guilty

standing still as the solid Texas ground shifts, 

as devastating to her as tectonics, 

as gravity, blood.

In school, she mastered her language

while theirs was elective, worth losing.

But worlds change inside lifetimes

and now she feels the guilt 

of ignorance at the grocery store, the gas pump, church.

Words are mountains. We exalted them

when we met, sharing books like cake,

swiping poetry with gooey fingers and sighing through closed eyes.

But words are mountains, impassable and hard and 

conquerable--

one step at a time, because they are there.

I should have stopped her, should have asked 

What word of theirs 

do you love, when it stops being noise 

and turns into music?

Because there's a song I hum to myself, full of words 

I infer but don't know and refuse to look up:

descanso, confio, m'esperanza, fidelidad.

Standing in that room with dozens of voices, 

I first heard the musical mystery in illiteracy.

It's where I learned the lesson:

words are mountains,

but we are climbers and lovers of heights.