Lifespan

Sometime in July, we realized a cricket had taken up residence in our outside stairwell. Every night (and sometimes during the day) he chirped away; that chirp became part of the family (or at least a weird neighbor), and my wife named him Jiminy (a nod to Disney’s Pinocchio, naturally).

Given that Jiminy is the closest connection I’ve had with any cricket, it seemed right to memorialize him in verse. “Lifespan” was the result and will appear in my upcoming book A Song of Glass.

Lifespan
for “Jiminy”

A cricket picked the outside stairwell 
of our basement for his castle.
Every day at dusk he starts to busk,
jingle bell chirping as he rubs the runners 
of his summer sleigh legs together
like the hands of a gleeful gorger at Christmas dinner.

Amplified by the amphitheater
of the well’s concrete walls,
his song of love and longing 
rides reverb through the dark,
naked as a star.

Then, as if night’s heart stopped—
silence!
Is a long-legged lady cricket visiting?
Is he kick-boxing with a rival?
Dodging the wolf spider’s eight-fingered grasp
or leaping free from the shadowless bat?

Three to thirteen minutes later,
he starts up, and I breathe again.
He’s become part of the pulse of the place,
something I check to make sure
things are normal.

But normal has a short lifespan
(eight to ten weeks in this case).
By then, summer will be over,
and leaves will curl brittle hands
around brisk breezes slipping from them
as they fall.