Silences of a Summer Morn
Ron Tobey
The net of city noise
lies taut on summer’s voice.
Sunken freeways pulse
with dull traffic’s roar,
low C-17s
wheel suspended
between battles afar
and worries sighing
on the airport floor,
power mowers weave
their looms of grass,
blowers plow leaves
beneath the trees
into loose sheaves
collecting bags take,
century freight trains
a hundred cars a mile make
screech their warning horns.
Yet in the interstices
life finds fertile
silence in which to grow,
draws memory for rain,
hope for fresh air.
A world recedes.
The morning shapes
a silent nave.
A world grows near.
Cooper’s hawks whistle,
subaltern finches squeak,
racoons scamper last foraging,
coyotes yawn to bed for the day,
bees contemplate
perfumed purple bells
fallen from towers of
Jacaranda,
gnats hover over
moist grass.
15
New Hampshire
summers past,
the glassy stillness of Squam Lake,
no ducks or loons or motorboats
break the morn,
deer drink at water’s edge
beneath high pines,
long legged bugs ride
a concert of rings.
Distant a trout
stirs the surface of the pond.
Ron Tobey grew up in north New Hampshire, USA, and attended the University of New Hampshire, Durham. After professional careers in Southern California, he and his wife moved to West Virginia, where they raise cattle and keep goats and horses. Ron has written poetry for personal pleasure since he was 16, but only with retirement has he written poetry for publication.
© Variant Literature Inc 2021