Summer Passing

I hear the somber concerto
Of the crickets who know
Their annual Armageddon is nigh:
Late summer is passing.

The ants and the bees know it
And make haste.
The last monarchs are translated,
The last lightning bugs extinguished.

Only recollections now of bream
On the bed,
Giddy sac-a-lait swirling in schools
And bass on the hunt
Where I once found the tax I owed
In a fish’s mouth.

But the crickets with scent of decay
Accept their rapid enfeeblement;
Collective faith inspires a final fugue, and
A harmonious hum is exhaled.

Certain that God is trustworthy,
They endure the inevitable hour
When their eyes become fixed
Without desperation,
Knowing that it is necessary
But not knowing why.

--
Stephen Grimes is a retired lawyer living in a rural community near Birmingham, Alabama. His poetry has appeared in Ekstasis and Voice & Virtue.