In the shadow of Monte Alban rests this peaceful pueblo where the roosters and infrequent church bells are the only sounds for wide stretches, where time ambles as slowly as the burros with their burdens and where cordiality is as ubiquitous as the wandering, wide-eyed dogs.
My whole life I’ve dreamed of afternoons as this, of allowing myself to become heavy and succumb to a lazy siesta on the porch and this yellow breeze that punctuates the near-silence. I could live an entire lifetime in this impossible sweetness.
Each kilometer of distance away from the city, the decibels lower until you can hear the aerial antics of a single fly. With silence and with sound, as Pomeroy’s piece below, air is an essential ingredient.
From Row
–Ralph Pomeroy
Slap. Clap.
The lake’s back
laps the flat
boat. Croak,
goes a frog,
croak. Flo-
tillas of vanilla
water lilies
float. Moats
of air flare…
- Take a turn playing with sound; see how it affects sense. Avoid end rhyme; amplify the internal rhyme.
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