NaPoWriMo/NaPoREADMo #10 — Following this noise

Following this noise


My wife chews 

on a crunchy cookie
	as she breathes 
		through her nose 
	next to me.


Our child turns 

a page in her journal and 
	sniffs on the futon in the studio,
		headphones playing music
	we cannot hear.


Our two friends
	
—brothers—
	on the couch and 
  		in the child’s borrowed bed, 
	both snore softly.


Traffic in the six lanes 

out front swishes and shushes 
	in the rain and occasionally 
		clump-umps on a 
	loose manhole cover. 


The washing machine 

and a jet overhead 
	in the night
		scream descendingly
	in a soft duet. 


Our new neighbors, 

still settling in, move about 
	upstairs, unsettling nothing, 
		while I lie here 
	about it all
		on such a quiet night.












Keepin' the "Po" in NaPoWriMo....

Grass

yellowing green wind–

grasses’ sound

drying in the sun

Tympanum, a cinquain sonnet

Sharp sounds 
impact only 
the thin skin of this drum, 
this timpanum, and then bounce like 
mallets,

making 
music of this 
cave, plucking the threads of 
this skein.  They will have no other 
impact. 

In this chamber, their soft timbres,
their reverberations 
and distortions  
are breath.