Lately I've been pondering and savoring the word citizenship. This began when an old friend, reading a book manuscript on which I'd solicited her commentary, pressed me to define the public function of criticism more precisely. To my considerable surprise, I heard myself say, "It's the activity of responsible citizenship within a given community." Though I've worked as a professional critic for thirty years, I hadn't known I believed that. As Henry David Thoreau once wrote, "How can I know what I think till I see what I say?"

Turning the word over in my mind since then, I've been charmed at discovering its components - not strictly etymologically, but free-associatively. Citi-zen-ship: Three word-images. The city, the chosen context of my life and work, that synergistic, interactive hive of people which contradicts any inclination to consider myself as utterly separated from others. Zen, that intuitive, elliptical, anti-rational, flux-oriented philosophy of mind and technique for living. And ship - my favorite form of travel, evoking long journeys on oceans and seas, a sense of suspended time, of being en route instead of here or there and relishing the condition of transit; yet also a self-contained community, facing the physical absolutes of its vulnerability to natural forces, the finitude of its resources, the need for governance if it is to reach any port at all.

So I have whiled away some hours envisioning myself lately as a voyager afloat on the high seas of my time, aboard this citi-zen-ship, heading toward some destination between where we all decide to go and where our karmas, individual and collective, take us. There's no place I'd rather be, and no place I'd sooner go.

For me, the essential act of citizenship is voting: standing up to be counted, voicing my opinion, exercising the most fundamental right that democracy has to offer. I've voted in every election - local, state and national - since I came of age. I'm no Pollyanna; I know the system is profoundly corrupt, and I have no great faith in it. Like many, I'm often disheartened by the usually mediocre candidates from whom I get to choose, and just as often disappointed by them once they get elected. Few of those for whom I've cast my ballot have ever won, and in more than a few cases I've pulled the lever for people who didn't have a snowball's chance of getting into office (Eldridge Cleaver and Ralph Nader, to name just two).

But I can't imagine ever failing to exercise this right. For one thing, I know personally too many people people - African American, female, immigrants from nations with repressive political systems - whose parents or grandparents or great-grandparents did not automatically enjoy that right, and either had to struggle mightily or else leave their homelands to gain it for themselves and their descendants. For another, I took part in the civil-rights movement of the '60s, one main purpose of which was to ensure the enfranchisement of all qualified citizens at the ballot box. Finally, people in parts of this country are still kept from voting by dubious means; and there are millions of people around the world who live under systems of government that have never allowed their people to go to the polls, and millions more who're fighting, and sometimes dying, for the right to vote as they please for the leaders they want.

I meet far too may people who just can't be bothered to vote; and I, in turn, can't be bothered with them, can't take seriously their complaints about the status quo. Participatory democracy is not a spectator sport. They're choosing to be part of the problem instead of part of the solution. For me, voting is not just a right but a privilege, an obligation, an imperative. The principle is simple: so long as there's even one person of voting age in the world who's not allowed to vote in free elections, then I don't get to even think of abstaining, of not showing up at the polls on election day.

So if you won't do it for yourself, then do it in memory of all those who never once got to do it for themselves, and in honor of those who would -- and will -- give their lives to stand inside that booth and pick those who'll govern them. As Carolyn Forché, a poet of my acquaintance, once wrote in a poem titled "Return," "It is/not your right to feel powerless. Better people/than you were powerless."

(This column is dedicated to Colleen Thornton.)