My Mother's Voice Poem by Ken Nye

I don’t ever remember wondering if a voice
I faintly heard was my mother’s voice or not.
I always knew.
Just as the fledgling albatross can pick out its
mother from the thousands of look-alikes
that cling to the same rock,
I could pick out my mother’s voice
in a crowd of hundreds.

Before I could talk or walk,
long before I was consciously piecing the world together,
my mother’s voice was as integral to my world
as the thunder of the surf is to the sea.
The sound of comfort, security and unconditional acceptance,
my mother’s voice was the serenade of my childhood,
the song that began and ended each day.

Mom is now in her twilight years,
and the sun in my heaven
is slipping toward the horizon.
But I suspect that when Mom is gone, I will still hear that sound.
And when I too return to the eternal soul of the universe
I will be enveloped by my mother’s voice
which was,
and is,
and always will be
the sound of love.