Today's poem is Sound Archive by Dawn Potter. It is read by Julia Bouwsma.
Sound Archive
What funnels through his brain
this morning isn't last night's hockey
game or bad thoughts about his ex-wife's
lover or even worries about the tumor
sprouting on his cat's belly; what he can't stop
hearing is the creak of the katydid in the maple
outside his apartment window, the exact same
song that has stopped him cold every August
since he was five—one more relic in the reliquary,
this hullabaloo crammed with insects, freight trains grumbling,
alarm bell clang-clanging at the crossing, tires sashaying
down a humid street, dove wailing on a satellite dish,
slow drip from a clogged gutter, scuttle of dog toenails
on a concrete sidewalk, faraway shriek of a ripsaw,
dump truck wincing into a crowded intersection,
flap of a chopper looping a hospital, and still
that endless clang-clanging at the railroad crossing,
and now a Harley revving, and a nail gun, bam-bam-bam,
bam-bam-bam, a noise like a heartbeat,
pounding, pounding, a thud he never escapes,
hammer of blood, hammer of lead.