Or if the wind roared, so long as it did
Not blow me down, but if one more truck comes,
Or if one more car pulls up to spill out
Kids and dogs and shouts, I just might lose it.
And do what? Get back in my own car and
Drive off? Sit and sulk? Hurl a dark-browed glare?
What is it in my own kind’s sounds I hate?
What if it’s not my kind? What if it’s just
Those sounds I can’t get much of a rest from?
I knew a man up north who lived in woods
And said he’d go mad if he had to live
Too close to a loud stream, a sound I love.
And then there was Frost, the bard of the woods
And snow and so forth, or so I was told
As a kid in school—Frost who wrote The Sound
Of Trees like a soul caught in a locked cell,
Some day when they are in voice // I shall have
Less to say, / But I shall be gone. Han Shan,
As he wrote poems on cliffs, did he dread clouds?
