Loud Music


My stepdaughter and I circle round and round.
You see, I like the music loud, the speakers
Throbbing, jam-packing the room with sound whether
Bach or rock and roll, the volume cranked up so
Each bass notes is like a hand smacking the gut.
But my stepdaughter disagrees. She is four
And likes the music decorous, pitched below
Her own voice-that tenuous projection of self.
With music blasting, she feels she disappears,
Is lost within the blare, which in fact I like.
But at four what she wants is self-location
And uses her voice as a porpoise uses
Its sonar: to find herself in all this space.
If she had a sort of box with a peephole
And looked inside, what she’d like to see would be
Herself standing there in her red pants, jacket,
Yellow plastic lunch box: a proper subject
For serious study. But me, if I raised
The same box to my eye, I would wish to find
The ocean on one of those days when wind
And thick cloud make the water gray and restless
As if some creature brooded underneath,
A rocky coast with a road along the shore
Where someone like me was walking and has gone.
Loud music does this, it wipes out the ego,
Leaving turbulent water and winding road,
A landscape stripped of people and language-
How clear the air becomes, how sharp the colors.


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Loud Music