Clade Song 12

The crickets strike up in September

An understated maze of choruses is what I hear
with my entire body as though initiated

into a hearing that permeates my scattered mind
and stills it some are small

jingling beads some a cool underscore
and some are chattering three dirges

it’s hard to keep up with the tender density
of their simultaneous explosion

of harmony on the brink of death.
they fill the steeped dark

and something has wired them
through me. I don’t know how to receive

this balm so taut with ending I can barely
listen and cannot stop.

The sustenance drawn from the natural world is a central theme of Adin Thayer’s work. Her poetry attempts to express and explore how nature’s power, beauty and lawfulness do and could affect how we behave as people. Her work also focuses on experiences she has had working in Rwanda over the past 20 years, as well as the moments of everyday life when awareness flashes and ordinary experience expands. She lives in Massachusetts and taught for many years at the Smith College School for Social Work.