Sounds

A hollow of shrill schreeping—crucifix peepers
—my father showed me one May evening in the bog near our house;
A wisp of a black cross over an amphibious back.
Treble waves of a screechity-sweet chorus
rings in my ears as I walk in the dusk tonight.

A wind eddy of leaf skeletons—swirling, rustling at my feet;
Somnolent dueling cicadas overhead in the catalpa tree.
Swooping tuxedoed barn swallow’s whirring wings into barn branches;
Muted popping of cornstalks reaching upward in the paralyzing August night heat;
The wheezy, whiffling snore of a fat black cat on the foot of the bed.

These he no longer hears—my father—
with beige hardware writhing into both ears;
no longer privy to understatement and background.
Life strikes his ears with blunt force, sometimes oversized
in a plastic sort of way.

Have I been mindful enough to savor and memorize
So that when my ears are impervious, like my father’s,
This heavy summer night air can draw me back to a time
when the voiceless murmur of one sleeping against my neck
was louder than the entire world?