“A poem in the style of Edgar Allan Poe, like The Bells, about a cricket in the room where my wife and I watch television that keeps ticking, ticking, ticking.”

Hear the ticking, ticking, ticking,  
How it pricks the silent gloom—  
In the hush between the laughter from the glowing television’s bloom;  
’Tis a cricket in the corner,  
Near the bookshelf’s shadowed border,  
And its ceaseless little clicking fills the room.  
Not with melody or chiming,  
Nor with silver-bell’d rhyming—  
But with ticking, ever ticking,  
’Neath the ceiling dim and thickening,  
With the echo softly snicking,  
Like a horror yet to loom—  
With a sound that worms its whisper  
Through the duskiness and gloom—  
From the corners, ever ticking,  
In this otherwise bright room.

How we listen—how we linger,  
Trying hard to tune our ear—  
Thinking it will hush, or quiet,  
Or at last will disappear.  
But it pauses only, briefly,  
For a breath—deceiving, chiefly.  
Then it rises, sharp and spritely,  
Ticking toward the chandelier—  
Not a tremble for our pleading,  
Not a care for our unease—  
Only ticking, never ceasing,  
With the surety of disease.

Oh, the cricket, sage tormentor,  
’Tis a metronome for dread—  
While our hearts, uneasy, measure fearful seconds in its stead;  
We have searched with lamp and candle,  
’Neath the rug and by the mantle—  
But its clicking, ever patient, slips like madness through the gloom.  
See! Our shadows wriggle, writhing,  
In the numbness of the room—  
To the ticking, ticking, ticking  
Of that cricket and its tomb.

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