Noise (from “Busy”)

Sound that grabbed the office by its ankles;

we couldn't open windows, noise
that packed boulevard to overflow, beyond

what any corner could contain, hundreds
of cubic feet of decibels, it echoed

vertically, where else could it go?

A salon of stomping, slip's push, whack,

backhoe, not thunder but the world
using its outdoor voice, bent out of human

scale. Hip high, skinny wheel of tongues slicing

concrete, chunks of road lifted ten
feet and dropped in a dumptruck's

tricky back, its shake, clang, echo—
A jewelled sound check of tune, the future of

The Future a coordinated verb tense away.
And always elsewhere a canker

of warning, some ten ton hut reversing,
Look out! I'm here! Watch me! — as if

its yellow flank could fuzz in and out —
and hummed its urgent two-note arias.

© Marcus McCann