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Benjamin D. Carson is a Professor of English at Bridgewater State University. His creative work has appeared or is forthcoming in Red Fez, The Ampersand Review, Cactus Heart, Free Inquiry, The Bitchin’ Kitsch, and the Charles River Journal.

Ben Carson

These Are Just Words

This beauty is going to kill me.

This field. Wheat. That tree. Oak.

The sky, the softest blue, a blanket.

The smell of earth, the heat of day.

But these are just words, not the things

themselves. There is no touching them,

no translating a bird song, a melody

so beautiful it is going to stop my heart,

a joy-filled death by a thousand warbles.

— Ben Carson

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