As a young child I learned
my grandmother never had
a dictionary, “useless book,” she said
I reminded her that it was full
of wonderful words, but she scoffed
and added, “I am full of enough words,
wonderful or terrible, it doesn’t matter.”
I asked what she did if she needed
a word she didn’t have before, and a smile
crept across her face like a luminous sun.
“Silly boy,” she clucked, “what on earth
good is a dictionary if I don’t
have the word, how would I look it up?”
Fighting to hold some small ground
I said, “what if someone else
uses a word you don’t know?”
Her smile returned, “by the time
I could find that silly book
the conversation would be long over
and I wouldn’t need the word anyway.”Info Box
Louis Faber is a poet and writer whose work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including The MacGuffin, Cantos, Alchemy Spoon, New Feathers Anthology, Flora Fiction, Dreich, Atlanta Review, Rattle, Cold Mountain Review, Pearl, The South Carolina Review, and Worcester Review, among many others. He has been twice nominated for Best of the Web and twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize.