Horns
by Kwame Dawes
I hear them in the morning, the horns,
the long, deep groan of ships at dawn,
the sound of something leaving, something gone.
And then the taxis, the quick hot blast
of impatience at a corner, a crosswalk,
a signal just turned green, a pedestrian slow.
The horns of our hunger, the horns
of the market, the brass of negotiation,
the small furious beep of a moped weaving.
At noon, the big rigs, the log trucks
blowing for curves, the warning, the prayer
of the mountain road, the echo off the gorge.
Some horns are ceremonial: the high, thin
cry of a bride leaving, the bleat of a carnival
float, the call to worship—the wooden horn.
And in the evening, the freight train horn
stretching across the coastal plain, a longing
that carries to the edge of the city, to the sea.
I have learned the language of horns: the short jab,
the long mourn, the two-note question, the flat answer.
They are not music; they are the syntax of need.
At night, the foghorns, the lonesome bell buoys,
the distant blast from the stadium after a goal,
the celebratory horn of a fisherman returning late.
And once, a horn so low and vast it seemed
the earth itself was groaning, a tectonic shift
somewhere deep, a whale's love song, a horn.
What do they want, these horns, these throats
of metal and wind, these lungs of industry? They want
to be heard, to matter, to say: I am here, I am here.
So I listen. I catalog. I bow to the horn
that wakes the dead in me, that calls me back
to the old country, to the harbor, to the ship's rail—
to a woman waving a white handkerchief,
to a child crying, to the last sound of land
before the horn of departure drowns everything.
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