What’s the sound of the middle of nowhere?
It’s not just the wind through the branches of creosote bushes,
pine needles whirling to the soil,
or the screeches and wing-flaps of a hawk,
the squawks of a murder of crows pecking at a hare’s carcass;
It’s the grinding of a backyard bandsaw,
chuckling between two old men,
the coffee slurps and pencil scratches of a high school history teacher,
whirs of the neighbor’s car up the street,
the warnings of parents to their first born
two acres over.
Music, voices, glass-clinks, and footsteps in the dirt and gravel:
the song of a quiet Humanity.
