The Sound of Earth’s Rotation

There’s the sound of the earth’s rotation as it
swings past space friction a kind of
squeak audible in peoples’ speech patterns to the
most attuned ear or audible in the upturn at the
end of birds’ song lines the last notes
ascending in a disintegrating splatter
or in the way lovers while getting to know each
other in the way that used to be called
courting anticipate what each other might
say or anticipate a kind of crescendo like an
orchestra in unison holding a long note extra
long as emphasis for an epiphanic
emotion that seems to go on forever and actually does

The sound of the earth’s rotation in the roar of
hungry lions around feeding time a sound of
leonine rasping large things scraping together like
big iron machinery
or on the other hand a sound completely at the
other end of the stress scale of water
lapping on the shore of a Polynesian island the
hushed insistence a long lead-up to a
momentary pause before an even longer
sizzle as it slides back down again into the
next arising wave

perhaps I’m only recounting random things with
sound as being part of the earth’s
rotation when it’s not really the noise a giant
celestial body makes as it moves round its
axis in the dark with one half in the
light which may not make any sound at all audible to our
ears as an actual sound as such but still all the

eerie and varied activities upon the earth as it
sails so free and easy round its
slightly tilted axis might yet be described as
contributing to the overall
ecumenically rich and eclectically inclusive
symphony of that sound

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6/30/2000 (from Shaking the Quicksilver Pool)

Categories: Poems, Love