Trees are shedding their summer hair.
What a tiny comb was used for grooming –
tufts pile on the sidewalk, bright and seething.
Where were we when we lost our crickets?
Softly, softly they left us without a sound,
dark-ness falls hard on hard ground, the cushion
they made gone, no love or jangle to soften
obsession, cool nights, bombs, part of the ear’s fabric.
You can never put the shriek back in the throat of the cricket.