Friend, there are certain sounds I love at night,
like the ongoing opera of the crickets,
the one-note sonata of an owl in a nearby tree,
or, should I be lying by the lake, the furious
but curiously calming encroachment and retreat
of the waves, or even the primal, contagious howls
of a thousand wild adolescents at Nelson Ledges,
shouting all night like lemurs,
their brains too stuffed with serotonin to sleep.
But the noises your lover makes with you
would not be welcome to my ears
were it noon in the middle of summer, let alone midnight,
then one-ten, two-thirty, three-fifteen and four.
It’s impossible to sleep when her piercing moans
nearly perforate my eardrum, so please let me know
the next time she will be staying and I’ll gladly
run off to Lake Erie for the night, or take
my chances with the lemurs at the Ledges.
