Quiet Nights

[rejectomorph]

A single cricket is chirping in my yard. I go out the door, and he falls silent for a moment. The night sky is paler in summer than in winter, even in moonless hours such as this. The shapes of the trees are clear, and through the tracery of their branches I can see stars. Directly above, the milky way is dusted across the deep blue. I stand still, feeling the cool air as it barely stirs, and the cricket returns to song. We share the night, that small singer and I, from the damp and dusky corners of the lawn to that streaming vastness of stars, my measured breath briefly in harmony with the wheeling galactic ages and the ephemeral insect clock.