Some summer nights you
can hear them getting all
worked up over this idea
of cheerfulness and song.
Deep in the grasses where
they hide, there is a need
to be heard in the darkness,
even if their voices are
so small they sound
like a door creaking on
its hinge, or the squeak
a drawer makes when
it opens up at last.
It seems as if the damp
air and dew are trying
to hold their song down
out of sheer gravity,
but neither dampness nor
darkness makes them stop.
In fact, the crickets like
to show off their song,
to let it lift up off
the earth the way that
all notes rise to the stars,
and float up through the
thick night, as if their
joy itself were the only light
we needed to follow.
~ from The Yellow Shoe Poets: Selected Poems 1964-1999
(Louisiana State University Press, 1999
