crickets

How many times had you passed this way? How many nights, long past vespers and veering toward matins, did you slowly stride the sidewalk leading from the parking lot to the apartment entrance? The numerical answer is irrelevant. More to the point, did you listen? Yes, you listened. But it was background music. Not static, not a distraction; but not in the aural foreground. On this night, south of midnight (you once had a friendly debate with your beloved about whether that means before or after midnight; you postulated post-midnight, she pre-; you settled, cordially, on the notion that one can argue either case with conviction and persuasion), you were arrested. No -- wait -- not so; you did not halt; you did not pause. Your steps continued whatever the antonym of apace is. A barely discernible hitch. Or that was all in your head, because in your head, you mused: I know I have heard the chirping of the crickets many times this summer. Ah, just listen to those crickets on this sultry otherwise quiet night. Of course, you don't discourse or self-narrate in parsed, grammatically correct sentences. Nevertheless, on this one night, as you returned home, the nocturnal chorus of males caught the frayed edge of your attention-surplus interior self. You do not know why this night. The crickets were chirping at a good clip; it was still hot, hovering in the humid 80s (unlike a week later, when at the low of 54 degrees forecast, the chirps would slow to a slur). It's impossible to describe the sermonette you delivered to your self. Something along the lines of what a privilege to hear these creatures, a blessing not so much of hearing but of alertness, attention, the gift of observation, not the absurdity that they were performing their mating songs for anyone but their females and competing males, more the suchness of getting it, the gratitude of appreciating them, giving them their due, their natural homage. People like to say "crickets chirping" to denote human silence, when a question is returned with stony blankness. This moment of this night underscores the raucous hilarity and fecund frolic of their stridulated symphony. Seize on this in February. 

And after having written the foregoing, as August calender-paged into September and then October, on the nights (as well as the days; despite our being informed that crickets make their chirps nocturnally) I walked into my building, the crickets' songs steadied me, salved my soul, and mellowed my loneliness, hunger, restlessness, or any other malaise, for which I was and am grateful.