Whispers

Our guide says we’re in the Valley of the Kings
to decipher the temple of Hatshepsut.

His voice crackles in the dry air of millennia
before us in the earphones he calls whispers,

as they become a time machine for hieroglyphs –
decoding meanings, eras, pharaohs.

I listen to his mythology of animal heads
on bodies of women and gods

whose time came then dissolved in dust
yet stand in silent stone images.

But you don’t speak to me in glyphs – 
you translate sounds about us, 

marry them on your tongue
give them life as you exhale.

Like the way I hear you as a guide
in my earbuds, your soothing voice

encouraging me to draft a new poem,
mouthing the lines I craft for you.

How your whispers travel, fill me
like an atlas with words I follow

long after the tones fade, the battery dies
and I feel your breath on my ear.

ALAN PERRY

Alan Perry is the author of Clerk of the Dead from Main Street Rag Press (2020). His poems have appeared in Tahoma Literary Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Third Wednesday, and elsewhere. A Best of the Net nominee, he is Co–Managing Editor of RockPaperPoem. His second chapbook, The Heart of It, will be published by Kelsay Books in 2025.