Just beyond the leaves and the white faces
of the lilies,
I saw the wings
of the green snow cricket
as it went flying
from vine to vine,
searching, then finding a shadowed place in which
to sit and sing—
and by singing I mean, in this instance,
not just the work of the little mouth-cave,
but of every enfoldment of the body—
a singing that has no words
or a single bar of music
or anything more, in fact, than one repeated
rippling phrase
built of loneliness
and its consequences: longing
and hope.
Pale and humped,
the snow cricket sat all evening
in a leafy hut, in the honeysuckle.
It was trembling
with the force
of its crying out,
and in truth I couldn’t wait to see if another would come to it
for fear that it wouldn’t,
and I wouldn’t be able to bear it.
I wished it good luck, with all my heart,
and went back over the lawn, to where the lilies were standing
on their calm, cob feet,
each in the ease
of a single, waxy body
breathing contentedly in the chill night air;
and I swear I pitied them, as I looked down
into the theater of their perfect faces—
that frozen, bottomless glare.