Hearing Voices
by Georganna Millman
When the thumb of summer presses down
and the creek dries up,
a subterranean babble rises from under bed-rocks,
lapping at the roof of a mouth.
It could pass for someone sighing, a girl laughing,
lovers whispering secrets grabbed by air.
It could be what is left of ancient voices
escaping through their secret door—
much like trapped fingerling trout
thrashing against the prison chill
of their shrinking pools, weight of the end
upon them.
“Hearing Voices” was selected by Major Jackson as a runner-up in the 2009 Ruth Stone Poetry Prize.
- Read winning poem “Edges” by David Cooke.
- Read honorable mention “Falsifiability” by Ravi Shankar.
- For info about the 2010 Ruth Stone poetry prize, which will be judged by Matthew Dickman, click here.
- For more poems, click here.
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
Beautiful! I always love your words. It describes our creek as it usually is in summer, but not this summer.
Great poem! There is a lot of history in that particular creek. The creek holds memories of sound and releases them when the hot season arrives.
This poem is wonderful! You are an extremely skilled poet, and richly deserve winning the Astounding Beauty Ruffian Press Poetry Award for 2008.
Yes, yes “astoundingly beautiful.” Can’t wait to see what you’ll do next! Thank you for sharing your gifts, Georgie.
This poem sounds great and feels great to the imagination! Thanks Georganna.
very powerful poem!!! you really captured the ‘feel’ that one gets halfway thru each catskill summer when all the small streams and creeks dry up. i really enjoyed this one.
I started writing this poem when my sons were young. Last year, I picked it up and began revision with the idea of submitting it to the Ruth Stone Poetry Prize. Now that my sons are grown, I made the artistic decision to take them out of the poem hoping the ghosts of the past would haunt the lines.
“Hearing Voices” really captures that edge between what was & what is, between what we can perceive & what remains in the memory, or in the imagination. Yet for those fingerlings–and for us–that edge can become startlingly real. Bravo.
Hauntingly poignant, “Hearing Voices” sets me on a contemplative journey wherein I am joined by an array of amorphous ancestral apparitions. The perfect reading for a late summer’s eve.