Please Continue to Hold

I was on hold with the billing department—

the automated voice had said twelve minutes, then nine,

then twelve again, which is its own kind of art—

when the truck came down the street, playing a line

I hadn't heard since I was maybe nine years old,

the song a little warped, the speaker bad,

the afternoon light that particular shade of old

newsprint, yellow going gray. Nobody had

come out. No kids. No screen doors. Just the truck

moving at the speed of something with nowhere to be,

the music dropping lower—that Doppler luck

of things leaving—and then the hold music back on me,

same tone, same loop, the billing queue resuming

like nothing had gone by outside at all.

I stayed on the steps, the afternoon assuming

its normal shape. The street empty. The wall.