Poetry

Audiology

Geoff Page

The winter shrubs are
crisp with wrens.
Wire brushes on a snare

are suddenly a
well-heard whisper.
It’s not a miracle exactly

but something very close.
The world retrieves its
rustled paper,

the sibilance of
jingled keys.
And now I start to hear my shoes

complaining on the gravel.
My typing is as brittle as
an office full of clerks.

Max Roach playing cymbals
leaves his fretwork in the air.
The sound of Clifford Brown on trumpet

(before the turnpike and its grief)
is sweet and clean as first I heard it
fifty years ago.

The world seems more
transparent now,
thinner than a leaf.

Geoff Page