Hum And Thrum

Hum and Thrum

I first heard the phrase in Sandburg, who
claimed that a singing copper wire, in a gerundive
fashion, used these words to summarize its purpose.

Love, war, money, fighting, tears, toil, desire,
death and laughter, all crowded the passageways
and left in their wake, this electric noise.

Since first reading his Under A Telephone Pole
I cannot tell the times I have stood, hand on chest,
marveling that all of these pass through me daily --

“In the rain and the wet dripping, in the dawn
and the wet drying,” while no one, myself included,
from Galesburg to Chicago, hears a thing.

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2008