One by one, the street lamps’ sodium-purr clicks off

as my neighbor's half-ton coughs

and revs, coughs, and finally turns over

and he heads off, a gravel tire-churn

as a gangsta rap bassline thumps from the cab,

circles out like pond water

after a stone's plunk. “In the end it's all

a question of ear,” says Kierkegaard, meaning the next life:

the next life as pure music, heaven's harmonic

resolve of Being's sour arpeggio. But for now,

suburbia is tuned to dream's white noise,

that octave three steps above wakefulness,

the one right before the clock radio

bleeps on and the percolator auto-grinds,

and the front door rehearses its slam.