A Voice, by FrancEyE

[Lisa Walford]

A book I frequently refer to for the Wednesday Am pranayama poetry reading is Beat Not Beat, a compilation of California poets screwing on the Beat and post-Beat tradition.

This poem is the very last one in the anthology, it is a fitting statement by FrancEyE (1922-2009)

This poem starts all nice and cozy.. I can feel warming day and imagine the fog horn.. the poem calls to me even, it takes me in. then, suddenly, it gets very personal. The fog horn.. we hear it, the warning, but we cannot see the other, the other that might shake up our life. "You are not in charge."  A huge wake up here, very personal. and the gut punch, "your children".. "taken away" over and over.. 

What might your children be? A project, a dream, an assumption? 

The poem ends with agency, a powerful capital "V".   

Call

I rest as the day warms, hear

through closed windows the faint repeated call

of the fog horn, three miles away. It warns off

sailors but I don't know who those sailors are,

and it warns me: You are not in charge. Your

children can be taken away from you,

your life ended over and over

before it is over. Listen, 

it says: A voice. That's 

all you have. 

Now, perhaps, reread the poem. We have voices in our head. Do they support you, undermine you, confuse you? What is the bridge between what arises inside and what you actually say? One of the morning prayers I have memorized, from John O'Donahue, says to be "clear in speech" and "courageous in thought".

You, we, have a Voice. Use it to celebrate kindness, creativity, courage, compassion. Use it to affirm your own value, your own uniqueness, every breath..