Scott Simpson · Poetry
II. Inheritance
The World We Mean · Culture, Memory, and Shared Meaning · Singing · II. Inheritance
All poetryThe original line breaks, stanza spacing, and placement are preserved. Long lines scroll horizontally.
Poem segment 1
II. Inheritance
Every word arrives used.
Someone else wore it first.
Love.
Home.
Freedom.
God.
Each one carries fingerprints,
smoke, old arguments,
voices still echoing faintly
inside the syllables.
When we speak
we borrow from the dead.
A child learns the word tree
while pointing at pine branches
outside a car window.
But the word already contains
centuries of weather.
Stories told beside fires.
Paper mills.
Family names carved into bark.
Language is communal memory
masquerading as vocabulary.
And each time we use it
we alter it slightly—
adding tone,
association,
another layer of living
to the stack.
No sentence begins clean.
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