The Time Traveling Band
I think about crickets.
I think of how long their songs have played in the background of history. Tonight I’m sitting outside and listening to them thrum and hum, just as a light rain joins them. They’re like a jazz band together. The rain paints the grasses greener as the crickets play the blues. There is ample moonshine tonight. Perhaps the crickets and rain are taking shots? After all, it’s been on the house all night. Soon the rain and crickets find a groove. I listen in like my ears are hands, grabbing up their notes and taking little bites. I can taste the sweet and sour crumbs of time.
It’s these same ricochet serenades of crickets that played through the swishing branches and helped put the dinosaurs into their frothy slumbers. The same swan songs that played as they faded into their wastelands.
The same preludes to war that soldiers heard alongside the quiet clings of filling their sheaths, their whispered prayers for wives and children. Genghis Kahn blinking in sync before the fires of his late night rants overshadow the crickets.
The same ballads that filled the wild west, in empty town streets. Playing as clopping boots and sifting dresses weave away from the lazy saloons. Billy the kid croons, his womanizing words clunky but true, like lyrics pluming into the night. Billy grabs her hand, looks over his shoulder.
Tonight it’s a song for nobodies. The one’s that books will never find. Like me, sitting here out of tune as my crackling keys try to join the jazz band, looped inside this time machine. Tonight they swing and thrive. Tonight, they fill my time.
Here’s a song with some crickets…