Detail from Evening Wind by Tim Frisch
Daniel J. Rortvedt
Coyote Changes the Way We Listen
The fire truck’s howl, he tells us, is the same sound as ripping paper. A tornado siren nothing but the slow, vertical click of a light switch. Once you learn to listen through all of that, he says, you can't help but hear water boiling beneath the ground.
Before Shuffling The Music
for Janice
Consider the silence
Mince the quarter notes between early life and death
Boil potatoes Let the green tea
steep in a ceramic cup
for six minutes Touch nothing else
until the boats return to the wharf