A Song for Noise
Time has been called God’s way of making sure everything doesn’t happen at once. In the same spirit, noise is Nature’s way of making sure we don’t find out everything that happens.
– Hans Christian Von Baeyer (in Information, The New Language of Science)
I was there – passing by –
on an April day
when industrial gases arrived.
A long truck parked on Holton Street –
Advance Diecasting – their new home.
I saw tanks secured on the flatbed.
Primary colors on Hazmat signs.
Warnings in triangles – yellows
and reds. The delivery was almost over.
It was something that happened –
an event – so I marked it. Goodbye
welding gases I said. Cordial, to cylinders
in my rear-view mirror. Visit again sometime soon!
I could’ve said goodbye
to the driver too.
Said goodbye, unloaders and signs.
Goodbye tires, goodbye pebbles
caught in the tread, rolling
away to where?
When to leave off? To wrap it up –
when nothing’s really “over”?
It’s a never-ending, all-at-once
overlapping onrush –
Something happened…What
happened?
What’s next?
About the Author: Sue Blaustein is the author of “In the Field, Autobiography of an Inspector”. Her publication credits and bio can be found at www.sueblaustein.com. Sue retired from the Milwaukee Health Department in 2016, and is an active volunteer. She blogs for ExFabula (“Connecting Milwaukee Through Real Stories”), serves as an interviewer/writer for the “My Life My Story” program at the Zablocki VA Medical Center, and chases insects at the Milwaukee Urban Ecology Center.
More by Sue Blaustein:
Image Credit: Reginald Hotchkiss “Shuck pile. Rock Point, Maryland. These shells are returned to river to start new beds” (1941) The Library of Congress
As It Ought To Be 