Song of Quiet Humanity

What’s the sound of the middle of nowhere?

It’s not just the wind through the branches of creosote bushes,

pine needles whirling to the soil,

or the screeches and wing-flaps of a hawk,

the squawks of a murder of crows pecking at a hare’s carcass;

It’s the grinding of a backyard bandsaw,

chuckling between two old men,

the coffee slurps and pencil scratches of a high school history teacher,

whirs of the neighbor’s car up the street,

the warnings of parents to their firstborn

two acres over.

Music, voices, glass clinks, and footsteps in the dirt and gravel:

the song of a quiet Humanity.