Noise

The rambling bands play late into the night.  A brassy awakening as they stumble down the street in-step but off-key.  Their sound slips down the chimney becoming amplified and resonant between the handmade bricks stacked with plaster. I lie parallel to the street on my raft of slumber as the shrieks of youthful abandon interrupt the obvious flow of this quiet town.  Hours later, before the sun stretches to the horizon, the blackbirds chatter as if to nag it home to warm their nests. 

At seven, the bells one block from my bed remind sleepers there are places to kneel and renew, and if the listeners forget, they ring twice more each half hour, countering the call from Peter’s dreaded bird.  A descendant of this bird sits on the wall of our house, screaming his own praises until the neighbor’s broom restores the silence. 

The paved cobblestone remind me I am in Mexico, as nothing sounds better on cobblestone than a man on a horse.  The shoes of the beast smack the pavement proudly—the same sound as a child bragging his good deed. As the farmers leave to the fields, herding their animals for a day of grazing, the early commuters join the symphony of what is morning—shuffling their old sandals along their respective paths, murmuring pleasantries.

The abrasive calls of the garbage collectors soon overpower the softness of the dawn.  “Baaasura!” said so loudly and fast the word is indistinguishable shouting to my stupor.  As the trash men pass, the gas men follow, in a large rattling, highly flammable truck.  For such noise, my dreamy imagination puts a young man astride the propane tanks beating an empty canister with a stick—a hero warning the town of the imminent downfall of a household without. 

Sleep can no longer distract me from the world outside my bedroom.  I shake off my blanket of unconsciousness and join the living.