by Tim Sweeney

In my apartment on a busy street
I have a sound machine

It can mimic rain and more—
Quiet wind or waves
Sighing on some shore
Or crickets ‘neath some empty sky—

All these lonesome lullabies
My sound machine has stored.

And when the daylight dies
I turn its gentle sonnets on,
Then when it’s time to rise,
And the dark is almost gone

I turn off it’s lilting lies
To hear the honking, honest dawn.