Greenmanfruit- Mind at Work Mind at Play

Secrets in a Voice


There are secrets hidden that can be heard in a voice.
If you listen, very carefully, the tones are there,
concealed beneath rhythm and breathing,
behind thought and intention.
The secrets are deep, though rarely dark.
A well schooled ear can hear them,
detect tone and tympani,
record tempo and temerity, visualize all.
I was walking one day in the snow.
It was late in the winter, and the ground was far below, under feet of it.
The snow from the past weeks was compact, though not at all slick,
a fine coat of powder covered all.
The voice was that of my companion.
She had taken my arm.
It was so cold, you see,
that the lenses of her glasses
had first misted, then frozen solid.
Helpless without them, she took my arm and
let me lead her home like a blind girl.
But as we walked, I could feel the warmth
of her breath on my cheek and smell her breath,
scented with the tea we’d drunk earlier.
An she whispered to me, a poem by Eliot I think,
that poem by Eliot I love so well, “Little Gidding”
and we did not cease from exploration that night.
Despite the cold, we walked until the dawn,
watching the sun coax improbable pinks from the snowcoat.
In her voice, gently whispering poetry, I heard bright secrets,
secrets that revealed not the darkness
of night but what was brilliant, hard and good there.
In her voice I heard the music of
not one God, by many.
Hearing her voice there so close to my ear,
magic was made and Gods were conjured,
pink like spinning roses in the early morning twilight.
We followed a dazzling path threaded through
drifts and plowpiles,
with warm colors that belied the frost of the Earth.
Finally we found our way back home to breakfast.
She said to me:
“If you listen carefully to the sound the sausage makes as it cooks,
you can hear secrets there. The secrets are deep, though rarely dark.
I can teach you if you want, to hear those secrets.”
After the meal, fullbellied, we went our separate ways,
she to her bed and I to mine.
Now and forever I hear the secrets that she taught to me,
and I feel her hand on my arm. Even now I feel the warm
breath and hear the words as she speaks them still.