Watching sunlight stair-step down the leaves 
along tree branches, tells me music's being played 
somewhere in keys my ears aren’t tuned to hear, 
a soothing underwater take against the basic 
feeling something’s out of place. Maybe 
some far part of us receives it, like an aerial 
trained on outer space: aimed large, 
but sensing pieces that shift deeper in, 
moving protein around the brain lobes.  

Today the pack's off hunting, but my dog and I 
are home alone —all one— for now. Breakfast 
over, we’ll go back out to the garden; 
maybe then I'll get it, how she hears things 
she doesn’t seem to listen for. Could it be 
I might learn to do that, when the pack’s together 
and we balm each other with our playful rituals? 

Anyway, no matter where or when, 
some kind of melody moves air; 
it's one more step for hope. For instance, 
the quail covey that chitters as they dust-bathe 
in the raised beds near summer’s leftovers, 
green tomatoes and ambitious zucchini. 
(The sentinel male is perched on high, 
As per his contract, his forehead-quill 
bobbing as he surveils for danger.) 

Or the sotto voce cello notes of fence lizards 
scuttling side-to-side along the path:
Mind your channel, Mr. Human, they hum 
in my mind; watch out right and left, 
as they dive under rocks, or swarm a fence-post. 

To find the music source equals recentering. 
I’ll peel the curtain back and look outside 
for Rumi’s sunny field, the spot 
where he drank soul’s wine up 
without the comfort or the bother of a cup.