"prise the reluctant heart wide open"

This past Friday, I journeyed to see the Sandhill Cranes who take a break from their bi-annual migration in Monte Vista, CO. There is a lovely wildlife refuge just outside of town. A dear friend and I made the hour and a half drive to catch the birds waking near dawn. Their voices were glorious. Thousands of them chatting it up. Perhaps about the chill of the morning air, or whether they would cross the road for breakfast.

We watched as they stirred, and stretched, and danced their crane-dance. Hop, hop, hop - wings expanding, long legs bouncing. Graceful birds. Awkward birds. Slowly small groups would take to the air, their majestic wings welcoming the lift of sky, their voices a chorus of lyrical trumpeting. Here is a poem that recently inspired me...





Anyone Can Sing

Anyone can sing. You just open your mouth,
and give shape to a sound. Anyone can sing.
What is harder, is to proclaim the soul,
to initiate a wild and necessary deepening:
to give the voice broad, sonorous wings
of solitude, grief, and celebration,
to fill the body with the echoes of voices
lost long ago to bravery, and silence,
to prise the reluctant heart wide open,
to witness defeat, to suffer contempt,
to shrink, lose face, go down in ignominy,
to retreat to the last dark hiding-place
where the tattered remnants of your pride
still gather themselves around your nakedness,
to know these rags as your only protection
and yet still open - to face the possibility
that your innermost core may hold nothing at all,
and to sing from that - to fill the void
with every hurt, every harm, every hard-won joy
that staves off death yet honours its coming,
to sing both full and utterly empty,
alone and conjoined, exiled and at home,
to sing what people feel most keenly
yet never acknowledge until you sing it.
Anyone can sing. Yes. Anyone can sing.

~ William Ayot ~

(Small Things that Matter)