Spooling Hum
       

You know night city's hum rounding Market

to Embarcadero through alley throats,

mouthfuls of trash. You hear soft

whistles of wind over Coke bottles,

muffled cough

of a pillowed bundle on a park bench

as the blanket slips to the blacktop.

Who said it's quiet at night? As though

noise could be calibrated, assigned a color—

honking shade of fuchsia or flopped

awning frayed to decayed-tooth blue,

day noise too cacophonous to be caught

by pitch pipe or tuning fork,

night's long, even pitched-thread

unspooling itself around the world

in a D minor mood.

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Copyright © 2017 Lynne Potts All rights reserved
from Mame, Sol, and Dog Bark
The National Poetry Review Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission