by Roger Pfingston

While sitting at dusk, trying to spot
the drink-your-tea bird, a faint ticking
in the lilac bush (like a tiny lid dancing
on a thimble of simmering water)
has me up and craning, straining
to match tick with ticker. 
                                                            No,
not the daddy-longlegs hanging up-
side down, wired like a listening device,               
nor the moth about to bloom
like a night flower, but higher still
to the topmost leaf where a katydid sits,
thinking itself invisibly green and grinning,
I swear, beneath a pair of grand antennae.

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A retired teacher of English and photography, Roger Pfingston is the recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and two PEN Syndicated Fiction Awards. He is the author of Something Iridescent, a collection of poetry and fiction, as well as five chapbooks, the most recent being What’s Given, available from Kattywompus Press. He has new poems in The American Journal of Poetry, I-70 Review, Innisfree Poetry Journal, Hamilton Stone Review, and Valparaiso Poetry Review.