Sounds from a life (act two)

I hear the sounds from the animals in the zoo.

I hear the wails from the hippos and the moans from the giraffes. The sounds wander over the park and into my backyard. Sometimes they are interrupted by the bells that Buddhists use. I hear the sea waves and the early morning greetings from the birds. At the end of the day, I hear clouds yawn.

This is about a Japanese woman who is walking in the Botanic Garden on a hazy June afternoon. The low pressure has given her a headache and she is wearing an oversized sunhat to protect her from the sun she can’t see. She is walking with a kind Irish couple, who have offered to show her the garden. They are good guides because they know the names of trees. They are sad because they can’t show her the orchids in the glass houses or stop in the tea rooms afterwards, but anyway they can see the flowers.

The flowers and the trees.

Suddenly a grey squirrel runs down the bark of a Betula Pendula and out into the path right in front of the Japanese woman’s feet and for a moment she is terrified. She wasn’t expecting to see this type of animal and having it so close makes her uncomfortable. She is afraid and she screams. It’s an involuntary cry of fear that she has no control over, but it sounds so much like anger that the squirrel runs away.

Not far from her, a man sits on a bench near the canal. He is feeding the ducks bread, raisons and grapes. He feeds them slowly so that they can all receive something from his box. One duck has a damaged webbed foot, so this man pays him special attention to make sure he gets as much food as the rest. When strangers pass by and say hello, the man over-compensates with chirpy answers and cheerful banter, but this is the sound of abandonment. The misty June afternoon has given him a headache too and he wishes the rain would come to clear the air. The weather is making him restless and he even hopes for some thunder. He thinks back to a time when anger was still popular, and he curses the people who litter.

The sounds of his sighs show exhaustion.

This is not about the Japanese woman in the Botanic Gardens or the man who feeds ducks from the bench. This is really all about the sounds of grief, and why grief always sounds like a whistle.

Grief is a terrible man in the shadows who follows you daily and hides behind doors. Grief carries a whistle and nibbles his grubby finger-nails and smirks all the time while you cry. Grief is a menacing man, with a fat greasy face and the smell of his breath makes you vomit. The whistle rests out of the side of his mouth and there’s a snail trail of saliva just on it. When he finally blows, the sounds are high pitched and they terrify when they slam through you.

Grief is a cowardly piece of stale piss in the wind, and he only has this one very cheap trick. He can stay in the shadows, in dark corners of rooms and he can stay all day long if he wants to. Let the whistle be, just one sound in the mix, and let the other sounds around absorb it.

Hear the cries from the zoos and the bells the Buddhist ring and see if you can’t listen to sea waves. Listen all day to the way birds say hi, and at the end of it all there’s a cloud yawn.

At the end of the day, there’s a cloud yawn.

Posted by ruthelizabethpowell.