Crickets at Lakemont Park

The crickets are sounding a catastrophe

outside my window, reminding me

of the painted tin clickers whose tongues

we’d arc and release, consolation prizes

for the perennially rigged ring toss,

that huge stuffed Orangutan getting more

moth-eaten every year, smell of sweat

and hot axel grease, gear eating gear when

the paint-peeling rolly coaster creaked

its way up and plunged past the carousel,

the real crickets’ jig-chorus racket

in the long-limbed grass where we spread

our thin blanket.  Then the carnival light

and crackle would fade, then I’d arc

and release again and again. Your hands,

your tongue, the cricket-sung, grass-sweet dark.

“Crickets at Lakemont Park” first appeared in Spoon River Poetry Review, 2009.