Domain, Wednesday

The arc of sound firing into the morning, each volley broken in the
middle by a lapse, the barking ceases for a beat, resumes, ceases...
and other sounds wash in. Trucks and birds. Something noticeably squawking
in the bark's void. The back yard asserting itself.

This porch ends here and there by stopping.
I could lean over the edge or step off into not-porch, the next thing.

Not as the world was once thought to end at the edges.
Before horizon was mutable.

So the dog can only be heard from here, not seen, though the picture
its bark creates flashes onto my behind-the-eye screen with each renewed series.
Or sentence. Could it be?

The grammar of a cry.
Those who say all sound is communication.
Those who leave a dog on a rope in a yard on a hot day.

And what is the argument here? All this sound is
in something; once you pass the boundary you won't hear it anymore.
The enclosure made by perception.

You walk yourself out of range of one sound and into other ranges.
A truck carries its sound while you sit and
it passes, so you are the range or the truck is?

Proud, a lone dog's call, or plaintive?

This all will be absorbed by the green leaves, the damp soil.
Surely there's enough world
still to embrace one cry and remain unshattered.

Copyright © 2007 Rebecca Aronson All rights reserved
from Cimarron Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission