I am lying in my hammock
a back porch summer evening
listening to the soprano in the second floor
of the triple decker that abuts my small yard.
She is preparing for her next concert
with the baroque ensemble The King’s Noyse,
and I’m lucky enough to have a box seat up in the trees.
I swing back and forth letting melody and inflection
carry me into my soft and clear self when suddenly
from across the street a continuo
of moans — two or three voices of the men who live
in the house for the mentally disabled. I listen as their sounds,
full and rich, assert themselves into the night air.
They blend round my ear, a throbbing,
sustained tenor to the lilting aria.
The men are sounding the narrative of their day
or perhaps a larger lyric of life.
The stereophonic ensemble rolls over me when suddenly
from the opposite side of the street, a startling, insistant
cry: our local folk singer is practicing her bagpipes.
I am seeing mountain, crag, valley, mist
carried deeply into an eternal sadness, the witness of their call.
Among the separate voices, I flow side to side,
at ease. Soon they cohere around me, one song,
sound passing through my body, lingering,
extending muscle and every small coagulating beat
and rest. I am three-part invention, perhaps
quartet! But no. Neighbor Penny out back plays her hymns
and sings only in the mornings before she walks into the world.
And I have no need to go inside, sit at my upright piano,
and add my humble Bach from the notebooks.
Instead I listen and compose this silent, grateful poem.