Just now,
overlapping, the sound of water
against rock, against rock,
and, diminuendo,
with less plock, against driftwood,

and lower still, the ostinato
of a distant, invisible plane
playing in counterpoint
to a white-crowned sparrow’s clear
first two alto notes

and the zigzag cacophony
of a kingfisher’s rattle —
here and gone —

passing into three caws
of a crow as if every sound connected
to another, or as if one sound
were making itself completely new
again and again,

even this deerfly’s buzzing vibrato
one of the voices
that slide into or under
or over each other, and take place
all at once and at every moment,

though I hear it all
for no more than thirty seconds
before the self’s
deafness returns.