Arthur! I went on the wrong nite! / Poem: Song of the Crickets

Yesterday was a long day, a day of flooding and rocks lining the road, a no-nap day, a good-eating day, but hey I still had energy so off I went to the Elkins Park Library for Arthur Krasnow's Poets and Poetry Night.

I was a week early.

And so was well-known local poet Steve Delia, above, who told me the news.

I was crushed. Inconsolable. In utter disbelief I could be so g'damned stupid.

I had written a new poem - Hoedown at the Landfill - and wanted to get the audience's reaction. I wrote it half an hour before showtime, as is my wont, though I got the idea a week ago when I looked in my trash can.

I don't have the nerve to blog "Landfill" so I'll print an old one since my poppies are getting ready to burst.




SONG OF THE CRICKETS

This time last year
as the poppies burst on their stems
the three of us went to Maine.
You could say we took Maine by storm
but that wasn’t quite it, driving up the coast
that never did appear
for the new road swung back too far.
But we knew it was there,
the coast, somewhere.
My son told me later
it was only on my account,
that he and Sarah decided
to come along at all.

I unlocked the door of the motel
and put away our things,
our hairbrush and deodorant,
contact lens case and tour guides,
laying them on the dresser
and television set,
opening the blinds so we could see
what Maine looked like.

It was the dinner hour.

They were ready to start watching
television right away,
as soon as they’d checked the drawers
for things left behind.

There were about a hundred channels up for grabs
and they wanted to go through them all,
all one hundred,
to find a movie that
suited them both,
I was like that once.

They were tired and bleary-eyed.

I put the key in my pocket
undid the chain
and went outdoors into the state of Maine.
A car whizzed by on some road out front,
a road we’d turned onto from the larger road,
the road that never did meet the sea.
So much for picture postcards of
lighthouses and lobsters.

Then I heard it:
the cry of the woods
a trembling rising roar
that soared toward the darkening sky:
a switch turned suddenly on.

I stood at the door,
the white washcloth smell of the room
clinging to my hair.
I listened to what seemed to be
the first crickets I ever did hear -
ancient, spindly, gathering in prayer
from vast empty spaces
impossible to get to,
impossible to find.

I went in to get them,
the boy and the girl,
serene and barefoot,
their hair illuminated by the glow of the screen.
They were watching as two men in a bar
clinked glasses, neckties loosened,
while the two of them, the children,
hooped with their quick, you’ll-see laughter,
a knowledge of plot complications
I never could grasp,
certainly not now,
wanting so bad to break into their blue martini heaven
their barefoot bliss
to tell them of my find,
nothing more than crickets chirping in the field beyond,
crickets chirping in the night.