Thursday, August 6, 2020 - “What is a voice? A voice is a sound.”

What is a voice? A voice is a sound.

Once a voice becomes a memory,
it’s heard across Fourteenth Street

at dusk. Once dusk falls across

Fourteenth Street the voice becomes

an illusion. The illusion becomes

the voice, which finds its way home.

Home is a memory. It’s also a sound.

A memory fills the room; it also

fills a voice. The voice carries outdoors;

it echoes through the wilderness. June

or December ––– the voice carries

through the space in between the pines

all the same. The voice can spill into tears.

Tears evolve; they become weeping. Weeping

gets swept across West 73rd Street. Street sweepers

push the weeping away from 8:00am to 9:30am.

This happens every Monday and Thursday.

The weeping swept away in the morning light

creates a prayer. The prayer feels like a silence,

but also sounds like a voice: Yours –––– maybe.