After the Aftermath
I heard a cautious plucking
Of a rubber-banded string,
And a nervous, tuneless whistle,
And a doorbell’s lonely ring.
While the birds were oddly quiet
Till a starling risked a ping,
And a chorus of the grazing ewes replied.
As note by chord by tonic,
So the melodies returned –
For all we needed silence,
They cannot, will not be spurned.
We’ve lost them many times before,
But somehow never learned –
On the day beyond
The day the music died.
I heard the constant background hum
Change key,
To slowly raise the dead –
From tinnitus to the thrum of industry,
In C,
Inside my head.
From the tapping of the plumbing
To the footsteps that I tread,
Even my heartbeat was a drum
Which would not be denied.
Rhyming Couplets 