The following was written in response to a symposium by the same name, Yom Kippur and the examining, releasing and power of words.

In Dialogue

Dialogue curation;
The art of conversation,
Of counted words
And exclamations,
Of rhythms and inhalations,
Of politics and poetry
In gagging law and commentary
Noetics interfacing fantasy
In iterate sachet; intricate sashay
Report, limbs artfully raconteur
In echoes of tonality within
That other self, outside your skin,
Words berated, alternatively translated,
Antiquated, subtle, lucid, over-stated,
Convoluted,
Every known word has conformed,
Rebelled, been re-consigned,
Continually defined, redesigned
And normed, each letter holds epochs;
Been made love to, killed or scorned,
Adorned and sentenced breath and death,
The pace of tides, metronomes and clocks
And drops on skin, a goose-bump interchange
With someone other than the gasping wind –
Our words delayed or rearranged, prevented,
Dam-busted, corkscrewed and vented
And we, (for we is a dialogue by chance),
Even fragmented essentials of identity,
For we, conversationally,
Are agents of each circumstance.

Antonia Sara Zenkevitch