Ah the Fretwork - a reply to @JenifrMilitello

This poem is the result of a brief correspondence with @JenifrMilitello about her lovely poem Fretwork that was recently published in Poetry London.  You can read Militello's poem here.

Poems may seek to emulate prayer

As if the choicest words 

Were a remedy for loneliness

A substitute for thought 

Or a palliative for despair

As if the sinews of the tongue alone 

Would suffice to make us whole again

Through the miraculous collision

Of phonemes and air

But a poem cannot achieve

What a poet doesn’t dare

To be whole requires more 

Than a quantum of assonance

Fricatives and epiglottal sounds

Rather it starts silently

In the chambers of the heart

And only through steady practice

Slowly emanates from there