Richard K. Kent

Crickets

 

 

A little like trying to pick out

tunes on a stringless banjo. Practically

that pointless, this sitting surrounded

by a mid-October dusk, the window

open, one dim, hallway light left on,

trying to let the call of crickets

become the mind’s single chorus,

listening hard to let the whole body

become only hearing, listening and

listening so fully the mind is

only meadow–no matter the street’s

muffled car sounds. An autumn meadow

with its long, dry grass, hedgerows,

the loosening stone walls of a farm

lapsed and passing back into wildness.

Motionless, the listener, head

and shoulders erect for the oncoming

night, its coldness, the shawl of cricket-

song lightly stitched but falling, falling.

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