Patrick Theron Erickson, a resident of Garland, Texas, a Tree City, just south of Duck Creek, is a retired parish pastor put out to pasture himself. His work has appeared in Grey Sparrow Journal, Cobalt Review, and Burningword Literary Journal, among other publications, and more recently in Tipton Poetry Journal, Right Hand Pointing, Wilderness House Literary Review and Danse Macabre.

Let Everything That Has Breath

have a voice
and perfect pitch

Whether or not
everyone has a voice box
and can utter
consonants and vowels

everyone has a throat
a tongue and a mouth

perhaps a beak for lips
or a snout

perhaps a hiss
hit or miss

perhaps a trill
or a chirp
a croak or a grunt

or who will sound the alarm?

And what of the deaf?

Mute testimony
to the silence of the stars

or of the lambs
with their throats slit.