distant whistle of the midnight freight
pulling into the rail yards downtown
burring rumbled whirr of freeway traffic
passing endlessly behind my house
murmuring voices of next-door neighbors
home from the show and not yet drunk
muffled clink of the spoon against
the bottom of my ice cream bowl
a cough from somewhere outside
a cricket from somewhere inside
the ticking clock on the bookshelf
(Published in High Street: Lawyers, Guns & Money in a Stoner’s New Mexico (2012, Outpost 19); copyright 2012, 2023 by Tetman Callis.)