Driving home from a party, parsing
conversations, car windows down
to greet first real summer heat,
we pass through zones of peeper—not song, not chorus, though
scientists no doubt find pattern
in the high-pitched whatever it is.
Nor peep, which reminds you ofsilly chicks falling over each other
in an incubator. Every moist venue
between Pretty Marsh and Somesville,
every hundred yards bringsthis antic singing, somewhat
alien in tone, magical too,
like fireflies but auditory,
not synthesized but a perfectcacophony of the higher ranges,
tiny frogs doing their spring thing,
flinging music into dank milieu
of pond edge and marsh, inspiringa certain joy in our recap of the evening
as if every fault could be forgiven
when you consider the rest of the world
wild and wet and flipping out.