"Voices"

- by Marianne Worcester

The raven does not cry with his marbled voice
'pan-entheist' as he flies nor does the river burble
'deep, and glacial green'
prior to Word, was there not Song,
a radiant choir, arias of eagle and sperm whale?

I hear a wilder sound, fundamental, serene
from deep earth fissures rising, escaping seabeds,
trickling down remote mountain passes,
rivulets, tributaries, springs, glacial run off

the voices of waters coming, moving over stones,
through caverns, under moss, around boulders,
along migratory paths, down songlines, motherlines -
greening waters, getting things born, washed,
and carried along, waters breaking through, into
the tame and anxious regions
voices, tender and remote, fierce, precise,
women's voices, pouring fury and grace
onto hard places, singing brokenness out of land,
singing stars into DNA, singing hope into grasses,
singing themselves into home, into love,
singing the blessed back into everything.