The first time
I heard them
I swear,
I was to listening
to the most beautiful choir
in four-part harmony,
swaying
or angles wings rubbing,
& perfectly, playing
a common file instrument
angled, such a unique sound
symphonic & splendorous
they are all around
this free concert
an offering of
Mother Nature
chiming at once
uncaged,
& calling on the ladies
in perfect unison  
sounding like church
telling one another
of sunlit hours
say the flowers
fending off evil spirits
allowing me to travel
into the dark again
leaping over obstacles,
alerting me to danger,
still in their silence
  I am protected
by this harbinger of luck
a most powerful portent,
of coming things
they sit silently in the quiet,
like a copper cricket weathervane,
as the poor man's thermometer
spinning tales effortlessly,
in the wind calmly
  watching over us
a shivering in the night
save you, are mine
my Native American totem
or God's Cricket Chorus
foretelling of Sorrow
of coming rains tomorrow
ex-lovers and death
a shrill creaking
stridulating in song

Oh, I fear that day,
your music should go away
please dear uncaged cricket choir
  I truly ....
   hope you'll stay.

Cherie Nolan© 2016

Cicadas singing
a nighttime lullaby
sending me off to sleep

I sit and listen to the crickets melancholy tune
I watch the moon start to bloom
The stars pirouette across the sky
Soon the frogs are croaking in relpy
Fireflies light up the night
Flickering their golden light

A single wolf starts to howl
As if to ask the age old question how
I ended up so lonely
And where's my one and only

My dog is sitting at me feet
She looks up at me as if to say, nothing here is off beat
In the cool of the evening
the honeysuckle is smelling much sweeter
Than in the day under the sun's heater

The moths flutter around on silent wings
My heart is so light it just sings
I just sit here for hours dreaming
Under the moon that now is just beaming

My dog gets up and moves to the door
I look at my watch it's way past four
She's ready for the foot of my comfy bed
So I oblige, and make my way inside,and lay down my weary head

The Crickets cackle “crisp,”
With an only interruption, being I,
Atop dust, whisper and
Desert highway.
I’d tell you if I were running,
But I’m not quite sure, not yet,
Leaving the Coyote to eat,
Respite, and devoured,
The singing Crickets,
A’howl later,
To deliver answers unimpeded.

I have a faint memory –
A snake’s grip promised, via hand and
Crystal contingency,
“Wiser,” once bestowed, the mystic;
An epic complete, atop 17 years of thunder,
Steel stained crimson,
Street stained whimper
And forever remaining,
“Under-construction.”

Symbolic a more relevant scaffold,
½ bamboo and the other steel, the tower,
Note ‘fore me, it’s only purpose –
Elsewhere, and anonymous,
While I tap my belly to some
Melody we’d once enjoyed;
Maybe something by, “Coltrane,”
Or maybe not; but music we’d both
Recognize and reminisce too.

It’s an awkward alchemy of sorts,
As the Crickets, post-mortem,
Persist if only to chirp, and the Coyote mulls.
When the dust continues to cake.
When the whisper finds newer ears.
When interrupt’s abrupt, erupts,
Pacifies and interrupts again;
My precious distraction –
An amnesia loyal in away from, “then.”
Somewhere beyond, “there,”
And onward, “anew.”

In the wee hours
as the crickets chirp
and frogs and owls converse
a forest symphony
outside my window

I am reminded why I came here
not so long ago
for the glory of the Milky Way
the Moon and all the stars

as far away from light pollution
as we could have come
for the river
for the woods
for the quiet

And on those days when I would trade
our winters for a song
I think of all the years it took
to bring me to this place

I walk the woods in gratitude
for all our many gifts
and think
perhaps
the owls feel the same