The first notes were nothing more than simple rhythmic beats. One at a time, hollow and enticing. He couldn't find the source, didn't yet understand where it was or what it could be that made such wonderful notes. What were to be eyes, were closed, and the ears had barely begun to form. Still, in the enclosure, he felt safe and loved, if only by the sound of the beat. And maybe it wasn't the sound but the feeling. The shaking of his small form at every thump. It was warm, enticing.
Before he could form words, he made sounds. His mind still developing had picked up an order. He would awaken and she would come. Soft waves of different notes coming around the corner before she appeared. He reached out a fist, hoping to grasp these words, these sounds. He wanted them. He wanted to feel them, their warmth, their love. If he was lucky, she had a word or two, in the same sound as the hum she'd make as she cradled him to her. He watched her form her lips and blow through them to produce such sounds. He'd tried, but never repeated the melody.
No was his first response when his father reached for the largest knob. He wanted to hear the sounds, the thump thump of the DJ's beat and the calming words of the tempests' slur before she and her colleagues exploded into a chorus of words he still couldn't understand. He remembered the look on his father's face, eyes wide and mouth dropped open, but still the radio plowed on, despite the profanity that flowed from the woman's mouth.
Samuel was the first word he spelled for his proud parents at the teacher conference. But song was the one he wrote over and over in the margins of notes and textbooks. But never did the word come out right. Alone he could form the words with the expected penmanship, but when he tried to string them together it looked all wrong. The word appeared dull and sad, like a sentence off a worksheet. This was song. This was the hums and clucks of tongue and the words they made for a hour a week in a stuffy room with a blind teacher and her conducting wand. It didn't look so straight edged and prepared, it was loopy and horizontal and vertical, and striked through and erased.
Please, stop. Please, stop. The first song. With lyrics and beat. The ceramic was cold to the touch. Just beneath his bare body, steam rose tickling the hairs along his arms. Please stop. Please stop. Only two words, they poured from his mouth, as a foreign grip tightened around his body, pushing hard. The rattle of his father's fingertips against the tub's side. Over and over again. Who were these people, with their dull eyes and stitched frowns. Then there's his heartbeat. Thump Thump, Thump Thump. Please stop. Please stop. Please stop.
There is no pattern to the crunching of leaves beneath tender paws. The whistle in the wind is far too pitched, to even be considered. But what does it matter?
For a wolf hears nothing that speaks music. To a wolf, music is a scent that has long since been lost. A jackrabbit crossed trails with a river.
A wolf is deaf to the ear.