The Most Beautiful Voice I've Ever Heard

is a stranger's, known only from his words and recordings. Perhaps I was 14 or 15 when I first read and heard him, but still sometimes, his voice just enters my consciousness as strongly as if he were with me and speaking.

Like today. In Abbo's Alley. When I was lying along mossy stone, trying to take pictures of buds and leaves, what I heard was this:

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
by Dylan Thomas

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower

Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees

Is my destroyer.

And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose

My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

The force that drives the water through the rocks

Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams

Turns mine to wax.

And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins

How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.

The hand that whirls the water in the pool

Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind

Hauls my shroud sail.

And I am dumb to tell the hanging man

How of my clay is made the hangman’s lime.

Dylan Thomas - The Force That Through The Green... by poetictouch

My Green Age

Despite my years, 
I feel my green age 
in spring, lying aground
among last year's leaves 
and this year's flowers.

Dylan Thomas - The Force That Through The Green... by poetictouch

Three Beautiful Things: Dylan Thomas, Hyacinths, Congressman John Lewis and Happy

(inspired by Clare Law's blog found here)

1.  My first poet love, Dylan Thomas, features in today's New York Times in a beautiful article by Ondine Cohane. Like her, I discovered Thomas's poetry in high school. I listened to his voice recordings and read the poems over and over and over again the way some teens today obsess over a song or musical artist. In my junior year, I won the school's poetry contest (think oral interpretation) with "Fern Hill," and those beautiful lines still, all these years later, come quickly to my tongue and mind.

2.  The hyacinths in Abbo's Alley unfold slowly from bud to olive-cream to blue-purple flower, and with them I celebrate the coming of that season that reminds me of the generous fecundity of the world in which I am but a small part. I lay on the "fields of praise" this morning, snapping again and again and again only for the joy of looking.

3.  In my youth, racist terrorists tried to kill Congressman John Lewis, then a Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee activist dedicated to winning civil rights for all those living in the country he calls "The Beloved Community." A hero. A true American hero. A fellow native Alabamian, a man with dignity and faith in our better selves and commitment to doing good, no matter the cost, and joy in living. He dances. He is happy, and he makes me happy.