ManicDDaily

Here Sounds in City

Here sounds in city; hard to tell
each source, as if a starting bell
triggered buck-shot reverberation,
a clanging-to sensation from a scattered knell–

Neighbor?  Or a siren blocks away?
A din downstairs? Or, in ceiling’s sway?
But some tones sound inside the heart–
we hear those with a grasping start; they break our day,

not just with decibellic pierce
(though tuned at times to volume fierce):
a neon cry, you bitch, a crack
of sob; a dog’s strained bark, its back fur raised in tiers;

the loud and hipster’s swank and file;
the dumpster 3 A.M.–the pile
of what we were last week acrashing–
and (at it again) the smashing of coupled bile.

But the sound I’m trying to get
at–that gets to me–that, when met,
uplifts me to a golden mean
(present perhaps in every scene though I don’t let

myself much feel such measured calm)–
is that softly intervaled psalm
of a somehow-urban mourning dove–
a healing pulse that sounds in love though every balm

seems petrified where blocked cement
must be pushed by.  Yet, the call’s ascent
makes all that forces its stubborn way
through brick—weeds, worry, will—say ah, nest the moment.

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This is my attempt at a Fleurette – a rather odd form – AABA (with a extra long fourth line that internally rhymes with B – the third line.)  I wrote it as part of a challenge posted by the poetry blog With Real Toads.

The mourning dove is that wonderful bird whose call lilts so wistfully and that can, amazingly, be sometimes heard even here in New York City.