An exercise in listening

I used to do it across the county in Taunton
In an architects house, a living dwelling
A space that he created especially for B and B
Tonight I am in Muddifords Court Country House
A delectable if less reasoned reclamation
Now to the listen:

Road noise I guess, a continuous drawl
With little melody, or variation in tone or time
Streams of four rolling pneumatic wheels
Laying rubber onto tar-macadam
Millions of miles of these vibratory effects
My share alone runs into hundreds of thousands

Superimposition of the thin roar
Of distant aircraft engines
The front end, or back end
Depending on your place of departure
Of the transatlantic flight path

In the architects house
I used to listen to the trains fade away
As they journeyed up country
I romantically linked the train noise
To my arrival in the southwest of England
When I lodged alongside Plympton's rail-tracks

My ears ring now
Maybe too much time on the computer
The house is bedding down
Televisions and telephone conversations are stilled

All left is the tick of the typewriter
With each letter chosen
Also the ruffle of the cream cotton bedspread
As my skin scratches to reach the virtual keyboard

Ten years have passed by
Hardly without incident you might say
Hardly able any better to catch the moods
With the choice of words you might also say

The mood that is of all those mind-brain synapses
Pulses spinning and cavorting
As if about to shoot off into outer space
The same mood that says this place suits me fine
In a different life I would be here
In a pair of knee-high riding boots

Listen more closely:
Do you hear the train, steel wheel on steel rail
The repetitive clunk as rail joints are careered over
How many hobos on this night
How many less on that night ten years ago to the day

Through these lines you can pick at other stories
Pick until the sore says to pick no more
You have your own noise, your own communiques
Your own half way through the night distractions
That turn the point of purpose on it's head

Listen to the tap of keys
Listen to the thoughts
Listen to the processes that turn letters into words
Listen to the governance that turn words into lines
Lines of textual feminine discovery
As one might be foolish enough to think
That these words could ever be

I will listen for you, I listened for you before
I say this again, I say this such that the listening
Becomes a continuum of purpose

Often I have fancied
To shoot time-lapse photography
The same place images shot throughout the years
Now I fancy that with a night of sound
To capture decay & closedown
To capture flatness & nothingness
To capture regeneration & rebirth

I will listen for you, I listened for you before
I say this again, I say this such that the listening
Becomes a continuum of purpose



A poem from Nameless Places and Hospital Gowns - Love Cared for by Relate available from iTunes and Amazon