Little Voice
By John Herlihy

Of all the prime qualities related to the human form,
The human voice sets itself up to establish the norm.
What would humans be without the blessing of voice?
We need only to imagine the baboon’s wish to rejoice.
Scientists have long tried to get clever chimps to talk;
The chimps for their part are pliable and seldom balk.
Countless hours of trial and failure finally tell the tale;
The ability to articulate meaning lies beyond the pale.

The newly born infant has very little need for its voice;
The gurgles of pleasure and howls of rage offer choice.
Who needs words when the voice has texture of sound;
Pleasure and pain reflected deep in the voice’s ground.
Whether the purring of the cat or the cooing of the dove,
All newborn babies use their voices to express their love.
Slowly, they will begin to show personality word by word,
Express the most beautiful range of emotions ever heard.

Later, when infants become children and begin to talk,
They shout, they scream, they cry out and they squawk.
There is no end to the spontaneous sounds they make,
To the age of puberty when their voices begin to break.
Each singular voice takes on a unique quality all its own;
The smile reflects the laughter, sadness or pain a groan.
When children play together, their voices merge as bells;
That do tinkle and chime in ways that an angel foretells.

When ten, I was made to discover the beauty of my voice;
The good sisters, our school teachers, gave me no choice.
Exceedingly shy, singing in public was akin to living death,
Although I quaked in my boots, I still held forces of breath.
Every morning, before class, we practiced our rolling notes;
At first but feeble sound began to emerge from our throats.
I soon learned what had long been lying in wait to discover,
The lilting, lyrical, lyre of a voice given to me by my mother.

A boy soprano I was called and singing like a bird to boot;
The other ragamuffins in the boy choir didn’t give a hoot.
At Sunday High Mass, we filed into the nave one by one;
With face flushed, heart aflutter, my solo soon to be sung.
My voice floated far above the others, like a solitary bird,
My heart beat wildly, but ah the voice, the sweetest heard.
Sacred melodies opened a sun door to heavenly spheres,
The voice, with spirit all its own, powerful to induce tears.

Let us now leave behind the bygone era of early childhood;
Destiny turned me into another kind of singer in adulthood.
While my voice did carry me aloft on the wings of dreams,
Now back on ground uncomfortable with holiness it seems.
I soon opened a new door to my life with a newly found key;
Forever gone was the shy little wretch, my voice became me.
With all the freedom of colored kites up high in breezy wind,
By day, my poems became discoveries on my heart pinned.

How glorious to feel as an octopus simmering in its own ink;
My soul the one constant, steady in my life, the sacred link.
I am not one voice but the voice of fifteen thousand breaths,
All rising and falling with spaces in-between as mini-deaths.
Life’s sweetness, found like a bee amid flowers, belabored;
The tartness of life snugly fitted as a sword into a scabbard.
My entire being now seems to be summed up in my voice;
Either in praise or betrayal of life’s mystery, I had no choice.

Poetry born in the poet’s mind, but comes alive on the page;
The words uttered aloud with the secrets of an ancient sage.
Troubadours and minstrels give voice to melodies of the night;
The poet and poetess give voice to the rhythms of primal light.
Soul urges follow subterranean paths through cavernous gorges,
To emerge into the light, sotto voce, soft voice most gorgeous.
The softly murmured intonations of primordial bubbling springs,
Adorned with all the symbols and images Mother Nature sings.

You can hear the crowd murmuring in the paintings of Botticelli;
You can hear the daffodil bells tinkling in the poems of Shelley.
Nature poetry have us swoon with the exotic perfumes of roses;
Sacred poetry echoes the voice of the Lord speaking to Moses.
Poems of heart-break and loss speak with the voice of sadness;
Poems of happiness and fulfillment speak the voice of gladness.
Love, envy, revenge and repentance all wrapped in a velvet cloak;
The voice gives tone, texture and shape to every single word spoke.

Finally, there emerged through the mist of the mind a little voice,
And this, my dear friends, was the one voice with limitless choice.
A voice unique of its kind that only on certain occasions is heard;
A voice that rises to the occasion when our inner vision is blurred.
Boldly riding bareback on a stallion with power to cross infinities;
Boldly riding abreast of time’s arrow making its way thru eternities.
Containing wisdom of the ages in the reservoir of the human well;
Listen in the silence to a voice revealing a mystery only it can tell.