___________
I dedicate this poem to the memory of Jacqueline Patterson
June 9, 1954 - April 13, 2008
To a dedicated and tireless co-worker
in her calling of a lifetime of nursing -
mom, grandmother, sister, daughter and friend
missed by us all
___ D.B.
___________
Calling
There, don't you hear it too?
Something is calling, although
The sky is blank and gray.
The eye fastened on nothing,
The ear undistracted
And we with nothing to say.
But still that sense of calling,
Of something seeking attention
Beyond our conciousness.
That voice in voiceless things
When they cease to be themselves,
Losing their choice and purpose,
Joining the indiscriminate
Otherness which surrounds us
At our own times of withdrawal.
It is then the world calls us
As if to reinterpret
Or to reconfigure.
Whose is this voice? A god's?
Surely not. It seems
To be the voice of duty
That speaks of origins
And of relationships
Between things grown apart.
And I remember the muezzin
Singing every morning
Raptly, as if for himself.
Singing in the dark hour
At a distance, over all,
And yet outside our door.
His practised lilt spoke more
Of the puzzles of night than of
The determinations of morning.
As though the light had still
To be charmed into being
And each day a reward.
The voice is much like his,
A commanding meditation
Rising from the blankness
Of a sleeping senselessness,
Thoughtful, improbable,
But stirring us to beauty.
And like his, the voice
Links us for awhile
In its reiterations
Then ends abruptly, as if
Distracted by something else
Of no real importance.
_________
