Crickets and tree frogs
Choir the starlit yard.
Low in the east
a half-moon, opaque
almost as an egg yolk,
backlights the silhouettes of trees
like semiquavers in the score
of the Bach requiem
when a darker shadow
whispering into the branches
of a pin oak drops a pall of silence
into which barred owl chants―
Who dies for me?
Who mourns for the small?
―and every living thing
within sound of the call
is still and alone
with the beat of its heart.
But then the shadow lifts
and mockingbird begins
once more to improvise its
three phrase melody,
and the crickets and tree frogs
again relax their anthems
into the sacred dark.
~ Stephen Meats
Stephen Meats, recently retired from teaching and administration at Pittsburg State University, is the author of a mixed genre collection of poems and stories, Dark Dove Descending and Other Parables (Mammoth Publications 2013), and a book of poems, Looking for the Pale Eage (originally published, 1993; second expanded edition, Mammoth 2014). He has been poetry editor of The Midwest Quarterly since 1985.
Guest editor: Kevin Rabas co-directs the creative writing program at Emporia State and co-edits Flint Hills Review. He has four books: Bird’s Horn, Lisa’s Flying Electric Piano, a Kansas Notable Book and Nelson Poetry Book Award winner, Sonny Kenner’s Red Guitar, also a Nelson Poetry Book Award winner, and Spider Face: stories. He writes, “For my month, I searched for poems that meditate on “time” in its many musical nuances, such as in times a tune jogged your memory, times the music seemed to transport you in time, times you patted your foot or danced to the music’s groove (time), times the music jump-started your heart (internal time), OR meditations on musical elements (such as 4/4 time vs. 6/8 time OR swung vs. straight, rock 2+4 time).”
The Coop: A Poetry Cooperative 
Lovely images – that “silhouettes of trees / like semiquavers in the score / of the Bach requiem” sent me off shivering like the mice that heard that owl’s call. Thanks, Stephen, you made the night come alive.
This reminded me of sitting in the huge back yard of my granny’s house in aluminum lawn chairs in Louisville, Ky. Just listening to the sounds of night together.Thank you.Rebecca Ann Atherton White PSU ’84
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