The sounds of missing you

Cleo, we've occasionally been further apart, I guess, than we were this weekend; once I was in Milwaukee, while you were snowbound in Baltimore, and once you were jetsetting in Chicago while I remained at home. But this past weekend, as you smelled roses in Care-line-a, as you call it, I missed you more than I remember having done before. And so, in the absence of your tiny voice, and padding morning feet, and occasional shrieks, I tried to listen a little closer, every now and then, to the world around me. Here is what I heard: the thrum of dragonflies, in a cloud in West Virginia. The thin wheedle of a chain saw engine after it had been turned off, but still spun. The burble of shoppers strolling on the sidewalks of an outlet mall; the creak of sagged planks in our house. And then, on Saturday evening, your voice, when I called your mother, and in a near squeak of a voice (perhaps prompted by mommy, perhaps not), I love you, daddy.

I was reminded of Basho's haiku:

The old pond.

A frog leapt -

The sound of the water!

Staid stillness is shattered, and the sudden noise a revelation.