Dogs, bark-barking somewhere in the distance,
fire engine sirens’ parallactic wail,
cop cars stuttering their right-of-way insistence,
the city’s heartbeat a kind of sonic braille.
Stream of traffic like a base note thrumming,
airplanes screaming down the flight path overhead,
drifting from the park the beat of African drumming,
closer at hand, shreds of “He said, she said . . . ”
Then it starts snowing; priorities are shuffled.
Ordinary steps pose a challenge not to fall.
All the city noises suddenly are muffled —
the city’s soundtrack not the same at all.