Participatory Geste

Wearing hearing aids these past 24 hours has been an 

extravagantly sensory inundation; and I’m not unaware

there are other sounds out there - tho’, maybe at times, 

am glad I don’t have to recognise and categorise them; 

unamplified they are easily blended in a mellowness of 

ambient, unspectacularly ordinary background noises; 

- it isn’t until an augmented air of bird chatter flings the 

towel irremediably into the ring - shattering such calm 

Then I have to attend to this reality; the raucous crow’s 

calls are truth as much as feeding lorikeets shrieking in 

deafening unison are facts of living near trees in flower, 

& I don’t need reminding some bird song isn’t melodic, 

or ear pleasing either, sounding so much like acrimony 

one learns to expect from our parliamentary clique 

But in the event there’s a sense of participatory geste 

that pays fuller feelings nearer the core of what one’s 

being is supposedly about; so comprenez, when you 

shut birds and the rest of it out you’re denying part of 

who you are; therefore I see hearing aids worn more 

regularly - and even without human company 

© 20 November 2014, I. D. Carswell