For the Day 16 challenge, to add music to a scene.
Bicycle
It begins with the tick of a bicycle chain
Loud in the darkness, alone on the street,
passing by sleeping houses
where somehow, nothing has changed.
(tick-tick-tick)
And the high, unsettling whine of a singing bowl
vibrating in the power lines,
swirling along the phone lines until someone gives up
and rings it like a bell.
And yet no one awakens.
The small girl rides along,
up and down the gentle, familiar hills
rendered strange in the hour past midnight.
Now, the low and steady crescendo of the cello,
left slightly out of tune, and the click
(tick-tick-tick)
of a castanet, somewhere in the margin
between down beat and syncopation,
missing the mark on either
and a rising chorus of hissing stars
launches into a buzzing refrain.
The world spins like the wheels of the bike
(tick-tick-tick)
and somewhere far ahead, a packed car
is turning onto an even emptier road
where a single porch light awaits
after a frantic phone call,
often interrupted by drunken ravings,
but now all is silent
except for the
(tick-tick-tick)
and jangle of cut piano wires
flying up into the night.