Subconscious Music

Ten churches in Edgemere
have human bellringers.
They know the perfect acoustic spot
and invite with a tiny card
one person per month
to sit there on the night of the new moon
while the ten of them
with synchronized watches and metronomes
tap out the notes of songs
with pennies on the skirts of their bells.

Listeners say the music is so subtle
you think you're composing a song in your head
and they're scribbling lyrics to go with the music,
writing a line or two on scraps and napkins;
the backs of business cards and bar coasters.
They're leaving them on tables in restaurants,
under passenger side wipers on parked cars,
dropping them into suggestion boxes,
or (with a donation) into donation boxes.

The waitstaff and department managers
who find these snippets of song
sometimes toss them without reading them
and continue their tasks,
but more often, they read,
and the verses murmur in their underminds
through busy afternoons.

And after, in the evening,
when they've digested the fragments,
and they're busying themselves
with their quotidian rituals,
the phrases change things.

Edgemere has, over the last half-year,
become a city of narrow, crooked streets
with ornate signs jutting out from doorframes
advertising fortunetellers and curiosity shops.
The buildings grow embellishments;
denizens are waking up to discover
rooftop patios and two story porches and
basement tunnels which they'd never noticed before.
People living here wear more masks
and dance more often; they block off streets
for a block or two and gather for impromptu festivals of
food and wine and music.

They spend less time in church
and pray more often with deeds than with words.