A Vineyard Cricket

It's that time of year again, Cricket season! To celebrate, here's a new one (I know, but I'll shorten it by next year) celebrating both the season and the year Christine I I stayed on MV later in August than usual.

 

 



A Vineyard Cricket

Our first night we were enchanted
  by her choirs of evensong crickets,
Her being Martha’s Vineyard, where we,
  freshly arrived for an August week,
Heard them, bred of the island’s thickets,
  large, black, otherwise much like pudgy
Grasshoppers, joyously musing all night,
Harping their wing shells in constant sound,
  they never needing to leave the ground.

I, wanting to make a strange new friend,
I, my ear put out, found I could hear
  each choir members’ choral banter,
The one on the tree, those in bushes,
  and here, by the corner of the garage door
Below the overhead driveway light,
  behind a petunia planter,
I ‘earwitnessed’ his hide out, while he
  bowed his soulful 'O Solo Mio's'
To his crickette friends out in the night,
  and whom I easily took hostage,
With a plastic cup and new postcard,
  and brought in swiftly to our cottage

   I had a plastic terrarium,
Brought on vacation with us, bespoke,
  set to let for such a summer guest,
Added island sticks, grass, leaves, gravel,
  with fresh lettuce hearts, to make his nest

  I saw trepidation in our friend,
Who neither sang nor panicked, but clung
  to a twig, watchful as an old folklore hob,
While we set about our dinner
  of grilled fish and foil corn on the cob.
Then after which my love and I played
  double rounds of X-rated scrabble,
Then commenced to another game called
  ‘Let’s play ‘this’ next now, here on the floor,’

After, when we retired for the night,
  a bed check noted, on the lettuce,
Was evidence of hungry munchin’,
   and after lights were out, about two,
We heard him chirping, from the kitchen!
  and were serenaded, and slept by,
His island circadian rhythms

In the mornings, or returning from
  island beaches, we would take him out, 
He seemed happy to crawl in our hands,
  we twisting our arms akimbo,
As he walked about in corkscrew paths,
  up our elbows to wherever he may go

He was natural at posing for
  close-ups, with a flash and macro lens,
Like a Rembrandt study of the day, 
  or in still life to mock a trompe l'oeil,
Excepting he’d no intention to 
  take direction as which way to look,
Yet the flash revealed a light in his
  polished onyx eyes, two star pupils,
Presenting us this true persona, 
  underneath two reaching antennae,

Time, such summer weeks accustom us,
  until when the fifth or sixth day comes
We’ve cleaved ourselves to the lifestyle
  we wish for, but cannot hope to keep,
So, just as we’d riddened and banished
  the trials of our work week and lives,
We began to prepare and accept 
  returning to them, packing to leave,
Released our cricket friend to scamper
  free, with a heartfelt but short adieu,
By the old petunia planter

As we’d borrowed the Landlords beach chairs,
   they’d asked I leave them in the garage,
Which I took out into the twilight,
  carried down the gravel driveway, and
Lifting the garage gate with a pull
  I set them in the space by the fuse box,
Flipped off the light switch and while leaving
  I pulled down the garage door, while I,
Looking under the driveway lamp saw, 
  happy as a puppy to his master,
Running to greet me, not disaster,
   while I cried "No! Cricket!" 
As he ran under the falling gate