Encyclical on Reading Aloud

It is hard to read well, clear as the chime 
of a bronze bell, when three choirs of airy angels 
and a demon or two could be eavesdropping.

Flesh and blood listeners can hear 
when the voice cracks or the lower lip quivers, 
and the wrong word comes stumbling out.

A fear of God can serve the reader like beads 
of holy water sprinkled onto a flustered face, 
or incense smoking from its little gold house.

Were they not the words of the prophet Jeremiah 
that cursed those who do the Lords work 
with sloppy slackness and fakery?

Speak distinctly, as if a stone tucked between 
teeth and cheek were nothing but crumbs 
of unleavened bread, a blessing.

Follow along in the hymnal of the poem-
dashes cleaving the white space, three 
exclamation marks meted out for a poets lifetime.

Read so that every sound reverberates in the ribs
like doves let loose from wooden cages 
to soar into the azure sky.

Read as words ride the wind of volume
and pitch, each syllable strumming its own hollow
of the body, whirling and dipping.

Let images float deep in the pause between
thoughts, the great silence out of which we rise,
the void where the divine waits

to learn about life from our fragments of self 
cast into chaos, where in that one
beginning was the rabble rousing word.



 

© Jan Lee Ande