Lindsay Sears

Ghazal: Earth: Hear, Here

–-after Ronald Johnson (EarthEarthEarth) and thinking of Kirschen, Russolo, and Schafer

Sound is personal. A lonely vibration finds its emplacement in the ear; th
e cozy conception of the space a wave makes of the place for the ear. Th

e Futurists were celebrated for having an ear for the noise of the machine.
[To hear] pure sound… now fails to arouse [the heart]. Perhaps ancient noise —
rustlings, grumblings, cracking wood, sobbing hearts — to placate the ear. Th

e sounds of planes and cars today, they say, vibrate as a kind of heartbeat.
Transmuting stores of sun into the sounds that play Coltrane to the ear. Th

e deep-earth sounds that we seldom hear have been translated through sound art.
(Behold the new orchestra: the sonic universe!) The repeal of a predicted deafness —
the Krakatoan concession — that could arouse an evolved placentation of the ear. Th

e screams from the Kola borehole were faked, and so Hell did not await us.
But hadal deep spoke to Lotte Geeven. A thundered plea to charge the ear. Th

e lover notices the life within earthly pleasures or, as Hass writes, the other shock /
of the singular lived life. The tandem redundancy; the heart notes the burden of life
in another. He hears hoofbeats. The faithfulness of a pulse, plainly coddling the ear. Th

e spiders of Issa’s house, growing indifferent to the methods and the murmurs
of man. Sweeping whispers of community like plagal calmatives to the ear. Th

e murder flew silently by, though the one crow forever laughing in the linden tree —
No, Lindsay, do not mistake the placid cadence of tiny surges in the February lake —
I’m here, I’m here, her clicks proclaim, and her presence plying the caves of my ear-Th

Lindsay Sears writes as a way to practice attentiveness. Good days always include birdsong and times of discovery with her human and feline companions. Her poems have appeared in Still Point Arts Quarterly, Green Ink Poetry, and Poetry Pea Journal. She has worked as a high school science teacher and mental health nurse. She is currently a graduate student in liberal arts at Auburn University, Montgomery, Alabama.