My children have been bickering a lot lately and it’s been taxing to my soul. I find great repose from it all when I go out in the evening for a walk. This past Monday and Tuesday when I escaped out the front door, each time I immediately felt tension in my neck and shoulders melt away, as the music of the different insects around played on rhythmically. And I loved that.

So my mind got to wondering about the different noises I hear in the evenings/nights on my walks, and I did a bit of Google research and found answers. Cicadas like to sing in the day for a bit, then they’re quiet and then show up again right at dusk to say good night. After and during the cicadas’ goodnight greeting, crickets, katydids, and frogs – all male – begin to sing their different songs in order to impress and attract females.

My mind wandered from those thoughts to God, and I wondered if maybe God gets the same kind of relief I get, from hearing the different songs of his creatures? But then I thought about how God actually is God and probably needs no such relief. But if He did, I thought all speculatively, probably He gets it CONSTANTLY with the angels all singing “holy, holy, holy” around His throne. So like, He gets instant relief from all noise of the prayers, cries, yelps, and bickering of His kids. He doesn’t need relief – like I do – from the bickering of His kids (us humans) because He always has the “holy, holy, holy” playing in His ears? If that’s the case, I thought, maybe I could withstand the bickering of my kids if I had the constant relieving rhythms of the night critters in my ears?

Anyhow, so all of these thoughts is how the poem below took its shape.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy it!

P.S. When you read the poem, keep your mind alert for the “turn of the line” in line 7. A “turn of the line” is when a phrase abruptly introduces a new but related idea, yet connects the two ideas by fitting logically in both ideas. In the case of this poem the “when I’m all uptight” fits logically both in the idea about the massage, before it, and also in the idea about God, after it.

Up and down Whispering Forest I walk.
  Twilight fades and cicadas say goodnight.
  Crickets, katydids, start their wooing talk 
  and tree frogs trill to demonstrate their might.
I enjoy this rhythm in the moonlight
  after a day spent with bickering kids.
  It’s like a massage when I’m all uptight 
  God is on His throne hearing all our bids
on the one hand, on the other He sits
  and enjoys the angel’s holy rhythm
  and I think this must be one of His tricks
  to remain sane in the midst of bedlam?
Maybe not. He’s God. So I, after all,
  won’t bring in night critters to keep mind calm.