He chirps beneath our crabapple tree all night long.
The cricket’s krrrr is a two, three and four beat song,
Random and loud. He stops when a voice from afar
Seems to answer, rasping the same note bar for bar.
(The cicada’s bright buzzing in the August sun
Is lovelier, but isn’t meant for anyone.)
I do not understand the cricket’s existence,
His urgency, or his athletic persistence.
He fills the humid summer night with his griping,
Yet stops at the first pre-dawn robin’s sweet piping.
I’ve never heard him make a sound during the day,
Until today, when the air went from light to gray.
As the sun’s eclipse spread its mockery of doom,
I heard all the crickets in the neighborhood boom.
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