Many Voices

Poetry Month, day 4

Many Voices

… the deep / Moans round with many voices. 

– Tennyson: “Ulysses”

I'm still and always the girl

who grew up on an island

in a town surrounded by mountains 

and bushland and orchards and fields

with a wild cataract gorge

calming to a smooth river

and always, around it all,

the sea, the sea, the sea

the pearly-crested, foaming ocean

soaring up rocks or stroking the sands

and through my window the high sky

which I always knew as horizon, calling.

And all of the voices moan in me

and rustle and sigh and cry through me

and whisper and murmur and croon

and roar out loud and laugh and sing

and ultimately speak in me: and through me,

and from me, and for me, and in my voice

and in their own voices, and we are all one –

we many – bird and tree, cloud and sky,

river and orchard, forest and field,

mountain and shore, rock and sea;

and wherever I go, over the horizon,

always the island sleeps in me

and wakes in me when I seek words

to speak truth, to sound the deep.

(I grew up in Launceston, Tasmania)

Written for the prompt Transformations at "imaginary garden with real toads", in which we are asked what poetic selves sing for us.