Out of Season

The jingle came at 4:15 in the afternoon,

all wrong for the season—too late for July heat,

too strange for November's gray. Too soon

for me to believe in what I'd just heard on the street.

I moved to the window. The sound bounced between

the buildings, refusing to settle, to show itself,

a tinny bell that echoed, unseen,

from everywhere and nowhere else.

By the time I stepped outside it was done.

The silence was bigger than the music had been.

All week I've been waiting to hear it again,

that sound that shouldn't exist, that doesn't belong.

A truck for July, arriving in fall.

A call for something I can't even name.

I never saw it. Maybe not real at all.

But it took something with it just the same.