Which is louder at a.m. 4:30?
Walking with a black Lab
the back streets of a small Kansas town,
a hot-shot freight angling in from the south,
its horn tromboning longs and shorts,
sounding the aching steel on steel
of freight cars, oil tankers, flat cars, coal cars
(but no caboose … never anymore a caboose)
all overlaid by the diesel electric OOOMMM
of a thousand Buddhist monks?

Or is it the moon?
The full, perfect purity of July moon,
following from the starlit, navy blue west,
calling its ancient mooncall of silence?

I say it’s the moon.