Putting It Together

I step out into the evening, into a cloud of whispered conversations, insect talk, birds uttering their “goodnights” high in the trees, the days last gossip settling back into a more respectable muttering of leaves. Then other sounds, a child’s cry sobbed out of an open window and then, two houses along, raised voices from down a dark passageway spilling into the street in angry throbs, and way off, clanging railway crossing bells bridging the distance, the growl of a truck changing through its gears and a siren rasped across raw nerves, all this finding a willing instrument to work the evening with all of its discordant notes and sounds, into a single score for an old busker to belt out the tune on the steps of his own front door.