The crickets are sounding a catastrophe
outside my window, reminding me 
of the painted tin clickers whose tongues
we’d arc and release, consolation prizes 
for the perennially rigged ring toss, 
that huge stuffed Orangutan getting more 
moth-eaten every year, smell of sweat 
and hot axel grease, gear eating gear when
the paint-peeling rolly coaster creaked 
its way up and plunged past the carousel,
the real crickets’ jig-chorus racket 
in the long-limbed grass where we spread 
our thin blanket. Then the carnival light
and crackle would fade, then I’d arc 
and release again and again. Your hands, 
your tongue, the cricket-sung, mown-grass dark.