Visiting the Waterfall

Erik Kennedy

If I’d grown up here

I’d have a very loud voice

from outshouting the waterfall,

and maybe I’d attract someone nice

who’d grown up under a flight path,

whose voice rises strong and clear

every thirty minutes or so

(more in the mornings and evenings

and on holiday weekends),

and we could have sonorous offspring

who could boast of their bellowing technique and

could whisper across two cricket fields,

and we’d rarely visit the waterfall

because, to tell the truth,

I think we’d already know

from our rumbustious childhoods

that nothing sounds as good

as quiet feels.