Neptune does not echo
by Regis Boff
We are forever
guessing
if we are a song.
Nothing is soundless.
We suspect but are never sure
that our noises carry.
My whistling
may reach Neptune.
But Neptune, like God,
does not echo.
Birds don’t care so much
for their own songs.
They care about eggs
and nests
and the size of baby new wings.
Cicadas lullaby summer evenings.
But the night doesn’t pick up
their theme
and begin to dance.
Flies whizz
their little ditties
by our ears.
And we brush them away,
like eavesdropped insults.
The flowers
exhale their perfumes
into the winds
blinding the dazzled slave bees.
Nothing disturbs the evenhanded blizzard
that is being alive or the drama
of surprising death,
and the odd collisions with love.
She sits among her
snowflake suitors.
All sincere,
Each different,
Each the same
all waiting.
Until she finds
the one
that echoes her song.
