“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.”