The Rest in the Bar

In a song I know there's a bar where the drums drop out, one beat, maybe two, and every time, in the kitchen, with the radio on, my head goes down for the beat that isn't there. I don't decide to. Something older nods for me.

They've measured that, more or less. Play a run of tones and leave one out, and the ear still answers at the moment it was due, a small dent in the dark where the sound should be. So yes, there's a place. The room gets ready. The chair is pulled out for a guest who may not be coming up the stairs.

But a chair isn't a guest. The waiting knows which door, not who. It knows a sound is coming, roughly when, roughly from where. It doesn't know my mother's voice from the kettle until one of them actually starts. And the part that comes in from outside, the grain of it, the crack in it, the one exact pitch, is what the waiting couldn't make on its own.

Some people who study this say what travels upward is mostly the difference, the error, the bit that wasn't in the plan. I like that. It means the world gets in through exactly the gap I didn't fill.

So the drums come back on the next bar, a hair late, the way that drummer always is, and I'm surprised, again, after twenty years, by the hair.