I’ve never seen the words fucking crickets
in a poem before, have you? Creak creak
scritch creak. Buddha soaks up sun beside me
while the crickets scratch religiously. (How
does he do it?) A bee strolls along his
lotused leg and the crickets go silent
for one brief second between chirps: a mad
caesura. Now rabbits run by, grinning
with rabbit fever, the little snipers.
Bunnies at Halloween? Isn’t that like
gourds at Easter? Our boisterous bugs seem
summoned by a silence that longs to be filled—
like the silence before these words. Aspens
turn deftly to yellow light. Buddha’s back’s
so still, you could write a poem on it.