Cynthia Atkins: The Last Cricket Standing

No wind is too cold for lovers — Ukrainian Proverb

.

 Are you the tiny creature taking up 
the entire night skies? — Our private 
garage band, teasing us with longing? —
        As if silence were a dance
on a magnetic field.  Lyrical, diaphanous creature, 
you’re the essence of all the good sounds —
dishes clanking, saxophones, laughter. 
This trill is the opposite of a tea kettle 
         shrieking. Not at all the siren’s pitch 
of warning just before a building 
is level bombed. The opposite of a gunshot —
         The endless echo.  You’re the hieroglyphs 
we work to understand.  No misgivings, prick-spur 
of our pride, the sandbags buff March winds.  
You are the old ladies whispering 
           under kitchen lights.  The earworm 
singing to pajama-bottomed teen boys, 
tapping chewed-off pencils on schoolbooks.  
You are pulsing in the hips of the couple 
           fucking in the next room —
next room to the next room of the dead.  
From the last blooms of August, sunflowers rise
           from the ashes of our ancestors.   
The women are lighting Shabbos candles 
with Molotov Cocktails — A baby is passed to arms 
on a train.  Looking for the sound of peace 
in a song—breathing, the whole world is in on it.

 Cynthia Atkins is the author of Psyche’s Weathers, In The Event of Full Disclosure (CW Books) and Still-Life With God (Saint Julian Press).  Atkins lives on the Maury River of Rockbridge County, Virginia, with artist Phillip Welch and their family.