Nocturne by Lisel Mueller

Sometimes, in the dead of night, I wake up in an immense hole of
silence. Then I wait, with hope and dread, for the first sound to
drop in it. Hope for something benign: the soothing background
music of rain, or an owl's throaty signal. Dread of a wailing siren, or
the telephone, which at this hour could bring me only a thick, de-
mented voice, or the impersonal speech issuing from the desk of
disaster.  Last night, when it came, it was the sound of a blessing, the
rough-and-tumble bumping together of freight cars in the switch-
yard down the road-that simple, artless coupling, and a long time
later, the drawn-out, low-voiced hum of the train rolling down the
single track. Sounds of work, of confidence in the night, in getting
from here to there. Sounds of connection; sweet music. I lay there
and listened to the moonless night fill up with sound until the dark-
ness throbbed with a dream of arrival.

Lisel Mueller