humm, hum, hum, hum
humm, hum, hum, hum
even the least of these can make the sound
that creates the whole world and all that is in it
if you follow that deep vibrating resonance
up from the center, through your vocal cords
up the throat, past the soft glottal tissue
and across the shaded boundaries of each vowel
that lives on the arch of ridge roof mouth
you reach the back of closed lips
that part into the slowly growing hole
of mhhh, ohhhh, ahhhhh you will discover
the mmmmm of mother and the faaaah of father
and the ‘p’, and ‘t’, ‘d’, ‘g’ of parenting
that rolls down to your molecular level
and extends itself back to the moment of creation
so that at once you are back where you started
and have finally reached the ends of knowledge

 

James Van Looy has been a fixture in Boston’s poetry venues since the 1970s. He is a member of Cosmic Spelunker Theater and has run poetry workshops for Boston area homeless people at Pine Street Inn and St. Francis House since 1992. Van Looy leads the Labyrinth Creative Movement Workshop, which his Labyrinth titled poems are based on. His work appears weekly in Oddball Magazine.