A Voice I Heard Not Too Late to Make a Difference

A voice flies out of an unseen place
holding a glassful of promises and memories,
in the way many people can see
from many different viewpoints.
We do not need to be disconnected from this world,
even when we are sad.
This doesn’t have to be a dark, dark world.
I practice being small and quiet,
walking into our world with new eyes,
to feel belonging. I belong
to the now, where imagination opens
the strangeness of a wing
belonging to a hatchling
trying to feel secure enough to launch into air,
to trust success. Is this so very hard?
I want to face what is hard in this world.
I recall when oranges arrived in a wooden crate,
smelling citrus, how it belonged to a place
of orchards that I never saw as a child but could imagine.
I live in this world of startled energies, its aliveness,
until it appears too quickly, like a hornet’s nest
or the impossible deer shadows
running after the doe has been killed.
A heron stands at water’s edge, unmoving,
its reflection wavering on water.
I vanish without knowing it, after dreaming too long.
I keep translating this into sign language
so that each word takes more time for someone
to understand each image and finger spelling of action words,
so that someone has to slow down too.
Slowing down becomes important. Noticing takes focus,
and before anyone realizes it, a thin spike of light
comes begging at our window,
with its stunning intense stare, like forsythia blooming,
trembling before rain or when you pass by
bringing your dreams, and your questioning mind.
This is when I began hearing voices.
But, perhaps, you hear something different
and it takes you out of the ordinary,
makes you turn a different direction,
taking you to a place sacred only to you.
There’s room for many possible voices to hear.

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Martin Willitts Jr is an editor of Comstock Review. He won 2014 Dylan Thomas International Poetry Contest; Stephen A. DiBiase Poetry Prize, 2018; Editor’s Choice, Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge, December 2020; 17th Annual Sejong Writing Competition, 2022. His 21 full-length collections include the Blue Light Award 2019, “The Temporary World”. His recent books are “Harvest Time” (Deerbrook Editions, 2021); “All Wars Are the Same War” (FutureCycle Press, 2022); “Not Only the Extraordinary are Exiting the Dream World (Flowstone Press, 2022); “Ethereal Flowers” (Shanti Arts Press, 2023); “Rain Followed Me Home” (Glass Lyre Press, 2023); “Leaving Nothing Behind” (Fernwood Press, 2023); “The Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji” including all 36 color pictures (Shanti Arts Press, 2024); and “All Beautiful Things Need Not Fly” (Silver Bowl Press, 2024).