To the sounds of our twenty-six;
to the sounds of our aleph-bets,
we’re sounding our lives
‘round our sounds.

And all our soundings
press us into what we are.

So I give thanks to Wycliffe, Webster, and Will
for still I hear them sounding their depths.
I am deeper because they willed words,
words that are pressed into my every cell,
words that speak to my soul, words that call,
words that stall the beating of my heart.

Start, if you recall
the first you heard of Juliet
and her dead Romeo;
and that bachelors may marry yet,
and of the night that our dead Hero
was from death recalled.

Start, if you recall
the beginning of beginnings,
when nothingness was formed
into rib and woman formed,
when the first light of dawn spilled
from Word and Wind,
when from fire, God did call.

Start, if you recall
finding Noah’s book
laid upon a table faire,
of spelling words like fare and hair,
of all the varied tongues that form
our England and America,
and of how large it seemed all.

And because of this I wonder still:
symbols making sounds,
sounds making meaning,
meaning making men.

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