Wallflowers

I heard a word today I'd never heard before-
I wondered where it had been all my life.
I welcomed it, wooed it with my pen,
let it know it was loved.

THey say if you use a word three times, it's yours.
What happens to ones that no one speaks?

Do you wait bitterly,
hollow-eyed orphans in Dickensian bedrooms,
longing for someone to say,
"yes, you... you're the one"?

Or do they wait patiently, shy shadows
at the high school dance,
knowing that, given the slightest chance,
someday they'll bloom?

I want to make room for all of them,
to be the Ellis Island of dictation-
give me your tired, your poor,
your gegenshein, your zoanthropy-
all those words without a home,
come out and play- live in my poem.
-Donna Vorrey

Just glancing at the title I immediatly think of flowers draped across a wall, but after reading the poem I realize that its not talking about flowers, but it is in fact talking about words. There are so many words out there, some words that you might not even know existed till you hear them like loquacious or even zoanthropy and gegenshein. Later in the poem it compares words to people at a high school dance. How many people will act like wallflowers (must of been where the title came from) and patiently wait to be picked next. This poem is very descriptive. Pictures will appear as I read this poem I can see the kids waiting in the shadows at the school dance and the hollow-eyed orphans who long for someone to want them. Its a deep poem of comparisons of words and people who desperatly want to be picked.