Crickets

We’ve all found places on porches where crickets click
And in these dreams the sun is setting
With a pinkish red hue, hazy and bathing
Us, as we bask, blinking as the last of the light
Slowly slips away

Clutch that cardigan tighter, slung over
Sloping shoulders as you lean back
And put your back into the swing seat
Sip on the straw and run thin fingers
Through rich ringlets of hazel brown

Relax and breath, and breath and relax
Little gasps of life enter your lungs
Between the drags
We’re living in the gaps between the day
To day, as each day ends

Whilst this weather holds
And whether you’re still holding her hand
When the seasons change
There’s no reason for ruining rhyme
With a shot of reality squeezing through the catheter

So click, clack and skip away little cricket
Grasshopper, locust or whatever you are
When you’re at home in the garden of my home
As the sun sets and the tide of evening
Takes hold, you’re still sat warm and waiting

For all of this to end, for that alarm to shriek
And buzz, as you stumble into life
Head-first and blurry as it washes over you
The clamour and scuttle of it all
You envy that locust, that cricket

Sat there on your lawn in the dusk
Chirruping, chiming away
And recognise that it’s not the girl
Nor the drink, but the insect
Who truly defines your nights in the gaps

After all, after the blast
The clicking and chirruping is all you’ll hear
Not her, not even the swing of this bench
But only an insect, a noise
To soothe you to sleep with a beer in your hand