It seemed a hiss
the drone of mating call
of insects lost in long grass
grating on short nerves
white noise on a muggy August eve
but that is just the speed
we think at. That’s the pace
we expect all else to race to
and when their mindless buzz
is heard with their ears
it becomes
song
for no reason but to sing
because that is the thing that must
be done
in ecstasy at being small before the One
How many more songs are being sung
by entities so small and fast-lived
that their chorus doesn’t register for us?
Too fine
cat’s purr five thousand hertz wide
distant whirr of planetary slide
a jive when played apace with human lives
and now I hear sense in my daughter’s cries
as tantrum slows to feverish high
I hear the words she tried to croon
the Mama, listen, Mama, pick me up –
it was a tune that spun on faster wheels
than mine, mismatching my headbeats
but that was the song her fever sang
the exultation it expressed
while I was too depressed
with longing for a quiet night
the silence of the stars as they creak past or
gentle buzz of crickets on a lawn
the white noise Nature gives the
world-worn so they’ll find peace there
in music they can’t hear
All things are in tasbih
for One who is to all these things
Listening.
(* Tasbih is an Arabic word meaning glorification – i.e. of Allah, of God. It is said in Qur’an that every thing in creation has its own unique way of singing its ‘tasbih’ to God.)
