Isn’t it always and hasn’t it always been a voice answering a voice?
The voice outside with its multiple morning voices of bluebird and robin and finch, the evening canticles of owls, the polyrhythms of crickets, the drone of the tanpura wind in the tops of distant trees like a dozing surf of an unseen sea at midnight.
The voice inside like a spring rising through layers of rock unstoppable as breath, as the Earth breathing, as the voice breaching the surface and soaking the moss to a greener green, soaking the poem to a deeper grief, a lava rage, an anchor of reckoning around the necks of those with their hands over my mouth, my sister’s mouth, my sister’s children’s mouths, my sister’s grandchildren who never learn to speak whole sentences, just the word “yes” and “yes” and “yes.”
I said “yes,” now I say “no,” now the inside voice begins with “no” and ends with “yes.” Yes to moths drawn to the flame of words. Incinerate me! Transmute me to daylong mayfly poems, my voice a glide of sunrise, a soar of afternoon azure, a shatter of wings at dusk, a gather of full moon drums to start the heart once more.
Photo by Adrian Swancar on Unsplash
