Scene

A single cricket is chirping tonight. There must be others a bit too far away to be heard, and somewhere there are undoubtedly hundreds raising a great chorus under the moon, and across the vast night side of Earth hundreds of millions, but here there is only the one. The house is too warm, even with the windows open, so I've been sitting outside watching the thin clouds glide through pale moonlight.

Maybe it's because I'm tired, maybe because the cooling night air is no longer the invigorating elixir it once was to me, but the lone cricket is making me sad. Farther off a single dog barks, probably disturbed by a passing raccoon. A car goes by on a nearby road, and its sound takes a long time to fade to silence, gone somewhere I'll never know where.

Another night wheeling by, the half moon slowly making for the horizon where it will vanish hours hence. Where the clouds pass the stars appear as though revealed by a theater curtain opening, but the celestial play is stillness and silence. There is no drama there. The drama is in the lesser silence here, after the car has passed, after the dog has barked, between the chirps of the lone cricket. The world holds its breath, waits for the story to begin, but I have forgotten my lines. What tension!


( Sunday Verse )