The Beauty of Music Doesn’t Have to Be Human

George Looney

The sky this evening’s a bruise. Too often,
in trying to hold the world
we harm it. Given that, I still want
these gulls not to give up
their chorus of sounds that add to
the music the sky hums, an aria
no human throat could mimic. I want to
read the bramble of the tree’s bare branches
like any other text, all language
a longing for what’s being said that can’t
ever be said. Any other day
I might give up & swallow every sound
I could utter. Not today, the wind
in cahoots with what I want,
what I need, to believe. Tonight,
this battered sky will hum a lullaby.