Bio Earplugs
For swimming, snoring or noise pollution.
Spearmint blue and chewy soft,
they tickle your brain, let silence swell.
Like slipping under water in the bath,
your heart insists on its double bass.
For once you hear the voice that’s you.
After the drive south through France,
châteaux with fancy railings, geraniums,
water towers, hordes of sunflowers,
your pillow moulds to your head. Enter
your Bio Earplugs. You imagine the square,
the creamy stone of Loches quietening.
A saxophonist blows his cheeks into balls.
Diners beat their palms together.
For you, a crying baby doesn’t cry.
There’s no whine from a moped pulled
by string. The ghost bus floats away.
A white poodle mouths at the moon.
Your pulse rocks the hammock of silence
till sleep takes you to a turquoise sea,
snoring, blowing happy raspberries
or you shake hands with the Managing Director
of Bio Earplugs, smiles all cheese,
Delighted in bold under your picture
or dream up scientifically-proven inventions:
nose stoppers for olfactory discomfort,
anti-touch gloves, blind glasses.
You smile, knowing you’ll be a millionaire
come morning, which you are, throwing open
shutters onto the street singing with sun.
You uncork the gravelly engine of a truck,
a metal ladder dragged over concrete,
fluttering voices of two old women,
a plane pulling a banner across the sky,
various onomatopoeias throwing in their bit,
a sparrow on a wire conducting it all.
Stuart Pickford lives in Harrogate where he teaches in a local school. He is married with three children.