The cricket doesn't wonder
if there's a heaven
or, if there is, if there's room for him.
It's fall. Romance is over. Still, he sings.
If he can, he enters a house
through the tiniest crack under the door.
Then the house grows colder.
He sings slower and slower.
Then, nothing.
This must mean something, I don't know what.
But certainly it doesn't mean
he hasn't been an excellent cricket
all his life.
The silence in the giant redwood forest near my home draws me. Many mornings I get up early and dress hurriedly to get to the woods before the tour buses and the cars arriving with people from all over the world come to marvel at the majesty of nature. At eight in the morning, the great trees stand rooted in silence so absolute that one's inmost self comes to rest. An aged silence. The grandmother of silences. I find the silence even more remarkable than the trees.