Silence. And yet a sound slips
softly into the night.
Then there is
another joining in. A
night song now.
One more voice, that high call, a howl
and another in response.
Still more
as I listen closely to the darkness.
It is a struggle to put names to
all those sounds. Some
are simple;
crickets, frogs, coyote lovers making
their mating plans, that wild cat I saw
last week, old Joe’s dog up on the hill.
But some sounds are not so easily
named. What is that
shushing or
the noise that seems like an old
man coughing or the sigh that
doesn’t come from the pines?
In the night I listen for comfort
with fear I listen to the night.
