Thank you, Agnes. This poem was written in response to something my father told me years ago. At the time he was slowly losing his hearing. He asked me one summer night if I could hear crickets outside that evening. I said, yes, they were quite loud. He sighed and said “Well, I guess I just can’t hear the crickets anymore. ” That struck me as very sad, and a few years after he died it I wrote the poem about it.