You'd think there be silence at night in the mountains
with the nearest neighbor a quarter-mile away.
But from the second floor deck on Sunday night,
on occassional car sounds as if its stripping tar off macadem.
In the interlude,
I hear trucks on Route 28 - two and a half miles away -
bypass the village.
The baying of a coyote reverberates in the valley.
Five miles overhead, transcontinental flights
from Seattle to Boston
drone through the air.
The din of crickets and frogs is a summer memory.
I would think it noisy as the city,
but the ringing in my ears
is the companion of silence.
Sometimes it's louder than
what I hear
and I wonder if I might hear the stars corruscate
beside the the light of the Harvest Moon
falling on our empty field.



						Brandywine
						10/22/97