Maddox is a writer, teacher, and creative force; she writes poems and is also completing a novel that she started as a seventh grader…and only as an adult knows how to finish. I love this idea of finishing the younger self’s work. She offered a word I had never heard (and one with more s’s than I’ve ever seen in a row): an obsolete palindrome meaning “ashes.”
This was a really fun word to think on; I welcome you all to try it out in your own poetry and share the results below.
The Stranger: Maddox
The Word: Esssse
The poem I wrote:
The way
to survive love
is work.
The way
to survive work
is love.
The way
to survive survival
is play.
Once each
has wreaked
its story
upon this earth,
what is left
is esssse.
The Challenge: Do you have a poem in you on this word? Write one here.
January 24, 2020 at 8:32 pm
I the Esssse; I the Flame
There is a stillness
in all things:
in the sedentary voyage of a stone carved, which stands erect from the forest floor, untouched since it’s making, incomprehensible fathomings from it’s foundation, as it has been without action, stirring, or motility, since laid by it’s ancient artisan, whom has generations since, returned to ashes.
There is a stillness.
Yet cloaked in the emerald cloth of time, and without motion merely perceived in passing, that stone buddha dances… Slow, and deep. To the very spaces in-between those rocky granules hewn and shaped, there is a kinetic locomotion, which arises, and that ever existing stillness which belies the expanding breath of life itself breathes within it. The life inherent in that stoic, carved stone, bedecked in moss layers and condensation dripping, which pit by pat dissolve the very minerals which comprise it. In that deceptive surface…
There is movement.
In the immeasurable pall, the steadfast dunes and un-stirring cliffs of silent, mountainous desserts, there is a dance betiding- older than our bones- which roils beneath what seemingly inert and uneventful crust is bared, in slow, unheard, uproarious, liquid convection, through the turn of the death and birth of a star which blinks out on the horizon and is born anew,
There is movement.
There is a slow burn.
The call of a halcyon which lived and lives, undying in our very souls, the soul of nature, and still reaches primal tendrils, instinctually through us, evoking of our very hearts and their nostalgic beating to the drum of innumerable walks in-between- in those spaces where for as long as there has been, there will be, and…
There is movement.
Where there was, and
There is stillness.
Enfolding all things,
in the kindling
yet unlit,
and yet forever burning
where
we can find the fire
the fire in us
and
“…Esssse…”
it says, calling across the breath of ages, spoken from timelessly mortal lips and the stalwart, solar winds of suns, infinitesimal and innumerable, the whispers shake,
“…Esssse…”
Enfolding all things,
in us,
and enfolding us,
in all things.
That very voice from our deepest reaches which says to itself
“Who am I? Returned to dust? Yet rises from the blackened pit of flame?”
and answers without hesitation
“I who am the carved stone that is still,
I who am the dessert dancing
I who am the stone in movement
I who am the sands, motionlessly, chanting
I am the Esssse.
I am the Ashes.
I am the Fire.
I am the Flame.”.
In the seemingly immovable rock ring of our very being-ness, that which is slowly added to and taken from, in morals and experiences, judgments and dreams, that which holds the shape of ourselves so that our very internal souls can explode,
in the ever changing creative storm that is blazing and still says:
“The slow burn dances in me-
igniting places within my skin
deep crevices unknown to minds
and superficial scars as old as time
I who am the sound, the breath of that smoldering
Esssse
I who am returned to dust
and reborn again!”.
There is a place in that ceaseless stillness, of finitely infinite nothing, where the stretch of what is, beckons invitingly, with only the descript look of immovable permanence, and it whispers through us, hushing “…come and be…”.
There is a place in that unquellable movement, which states with unflinching and unbending conviction, to the thunder of blood through our farthest memories, “I am. I am. I am”.
They are twins,
Stillness,
and Movement.
They are twins,
Fire,
and Ash.
Only we are to remember, which dances, and which sits still?
What moves in one’s stillness, is patient in the dance of the other.
They are twins;
and we, their living relationship.
Somewhere, there is a fire, burning, low and slow. A fire as deep as the counter rotating cores of the earth, swathed in rivers of flowing magma compacted by the weight of gravity which presses in from an entire universe, and yet still churns unyielding.
Somewhere, there is a pit of ashes, that appears lifeless, but for in the darkest place, for there we see in it the essence of a waltz eternal,
as in the great, catalystic molten core, and in each moment in-between its steady path, stillness
as in the vast and tremendous void of that desert, and its culmination of interpret-ably stagnant sojourns, there is
movement.
Somewhere, right, here,
There is a balance,
a duality, which sparks all of life-
where the stone buddha dances
and the sand dunes sing,
where the forest seems untouched
and the barren land without swing;
there is a place, the very pit
we are forged from
where we are the ashes and we are the blaze
we are the Esssse
and we are the Flame-
where an ancient part of us which knows the language of all things,
cries out in jubilance
Again
“I the Esssse;
I the Flame.”
And that age old artisan who laid down the stone,
opens their eyes
born,
again.
Home.
Maddox Ames Lightning~
The stranger…
For meeting Esssse’s acquaintance, I thank a beloved curiosity of a book: Mrs. Byrne’s Dictionary of Unusual, Obscure, and Preposterous Words, which largely inspired me into writing more and more as a girl.
January 27, 2020 at 1:44 pm
Thank you for this beautiful, thought provoking poem.
January 27, 2020 at 4:27 pm
Thank you! The word is absolutely intriguing… as are some of my favorites! Ones that make you think!
January 26, 2020 at 10:08 am
Esssse, hissed
the snake
who did
beguile me.
The fruit tastes
like ashes.
February 13, 2020 at 9:54 pm
These days
–when beginnings are endings and likewise–
you blow on the fire and
send esssse skyward.
You watch embers free to glow while
inert esssse blesses my forehead.
Sweet Love,
it was good while it lasted.
May 8, 2022 at 3:24 pm
Essssentially
What is “esssse”, essentially?
Semantic significance seems to escape.
Perhaps, I could assay a short essay
To see some possibilities of a take.
Searching lexicons, glossaries,
encyclopedia, thesauruses,
even unto head and footnotes
found in obscure concordances.
I didn’t actually do this
But a mighty search engine was engaged
But found little worthy of a mention.
Writ large upon the page.
The word’s meaning is elusive,
One might even say illusive,
Evidence is sparse and,
Possibly probably, inconclusive.
Still, it is fascinating,
Bordering on beguiling,
The searching and seeking Is absorbing,
But less than more exciting.
Only finding mere suggestions
And concluding when one must,
Esssse is to ashes
As dust is unto dust.
Though, certainly, it’s impressive and
Surpassingly conspicuous,
Spectacular in its sibilance
In hissing, ever thus.
Also, it’s a palindrome,
Snaking to and fro,
But much like Ouroboros,
It has nowhere else to go.
Sometimes words fall out of fashion
become increasingly obscure,
Not unlike a failed prod,
They’ll not for time endure.
If words are no longer used
And they are left as unsaid
To reside in dusty tomes
Essssentially, they’re dead.
I doubt that I will use it, now,
In my day-to-day.
Spellcheck doesn’t recognize.
It has the final say.