Evening Chorus

It is shrill, deafening and there’s no escaping it 

until these crickets have stated their case; and 

if impossibly you’ve missed it - they’ll rephrase 

everything that their ‘cousins’ from way across 

the valley have chorussed in having their say - 

and it goes on until evening falls requesting its 

now time to sleep - cease the echoes please - 

let us all digest this magnificence - & then rest 

But something tells me sex is at back of it and 

let’s bathe in that atmosphere - there is hardly 

contest from passenger aircraft on descent, & 

heading to Brisbane where evening sex reigns 

supreme so I see it as complimentary until I’m 

constrained to remove the hearing aids … 

And then I understand; it’s what I’ve imagined 

I must be missing … 

© 20 December 2016, I. D. Carswell 

* Acauloplacella queenslandica (katydid)