Beauty, A Voice, Even The Smallest Words Becoming Poem by Dennis Ryan

May 18,2003; Sunday morning, February 14,2021

- for my son Shawn

'My voice is my teacher that instructs me about itself- and ultimately about me.'
- Jewel Kilcher, CHASING DOWN THE DAWN

Something inside opened up as I listened
to the sound of my own voice, my own words
saying what needed to be said at the time,
the personal pronouns saying I saying you
saying she, the participles, adjectives running free,
saying 'trust yourself, trust in me'. It was no longer
a matter of making, of taking pleasure in the aesthetic;
no, it had become a matter of being, becoming me,
a feeling of pure joy. It felt something like destiny.
Besides, I had a form already, an I, a me, a myself—
these smallest of words filled out a world. Beauty
is where one finds it: in these smallest of words,
in these pronouns that speak to one's gender
and number in a voice which measures out feelings
by degrees, sound and reception endlessly merging.