Prayer For The Wild Voice
for Nina
Poetry is the natural prayer
of the human soul.
- Rilke
1
A long dark curve is the poem in your body
is the river
is the loon's throat.
Have you ever asked yourself how
the loon's voice
opens?
2
You know it first as change in the body.
Even if the blue place you are dreaming
is no longer there
you must begin.
Something that desires to lift
these heavy bones
something simple
and beautiful
miraculous as a feather
forms along the blade
of each wing.
3
Poised, no longer
settled
you wait as every part of you sheds
what once was,
and is no longer
necessary.
Close to shore you prepare.
And what will it cost you?
And what is this
haunting and wild, now
still in your throat, now
trembling
Set it free
whatever it may cost you
set it free.
- Cheryl Hellner
Back when Heron Dance was a quarterly journal, subscriber Cheryl Hellner sent in three particularly beautiful poems, including this was one.
. . . . . .
The wild prayer of the natural human voice,
deep down, shy, reticent.
It’s source, the wild nature from which we came
It waits for us,
In quiet,
Like a loon’s call on a wilderness lake
Out of the dark night
A prayer from a forgotten past.
- Roderick MacIver
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