There are times you can hear the future whispering

Photo by Adi Goldstein on Unsplash

It was hot the other day and my mind wandered back to a childhood memory, a joy I remember from the end of those long, hot summer days after my bath and before bed. Parents downstairs finished up the chores.

I lay near the giant exhaust fan (pre-AC), sang notes into the blades, and marveled at how the fan made them sound so different. A song sung into the end of a summer day.

There are times you can hear the future whispering

like when the sun
sets slowly,
at the end of a hot day:
and then I am
nine years-old,
lying on the varnished
floor near the window fan
at the end of the
upstairs hall;
parents, not yet old,
not yet missing
parts of themselves, but simply
downstairs in their hurried thirties, alive
amongst the clatter of dishes,
in the murmur of voices.
On the floor,
I lean to keen a
single note, like
a bagpipe’s drone,
into the fan’s deep,
curved blades,
which grasp and wrap the
sound around itself,
as if it had gone outside
into the lightning-bug night,
then arrived back inside,
crumpled and worn;
as if what I sang was
a message, a blues-note
bent under the weight
of a journey that
takes years to complete.

– Steve Peterson