I have been reading about the loss of words even as we are awash in newly coined ones.  This loss of words and the once removed lost words that we don’t even know anymore is a powerful and non-nostalgic one. But what is to be done when we cannot name that loss–a double bind where just by being a reader bound to the conventions of naming we are confounded, confused by the idea that there may have once been a name for it, but now there is not. Damn it and damn language.  I guess that is why it can provoke such a profound emotional catch in the throat.

I wrote a poem trying to make the argument that we need to rewild and resuss and recoin.  You know if you are on the right track when you begin to see the red squiggles of this rewildment underneath an increasing number of your own words–recoined and respent freely in your own work.

Ruemorse

What is the word
for the tantalizing realization
of a word we almost lost?
What is the word for the secondary realization
that there are many more words
already gone
that cannot be recovered?
I fear that it is the same word
that was just on the tip
of my tongue.
Oh, if only I had not tried
to recall it.
If only…
Nothing for it but to mint it anew,
to re-ken it,
to reckon it forth:

“ruemorse”.

Now, it’s your turn:

_{fill in the blank}____________________.