Mating Call

The peepers are out. 
My husband and I stand perched on the edge of our deck
listening to their invisible song
bubble up from the wetlands below.

I had thought them tiny birds
till he politely whispers
below their high-pitched whistles,
“No, they are crickets...marsh crickets I think that come out in early spring”.

He didn’t sound sure.
I didn’t care. 
Facts can kill a moment. 
They are his favorite sound since childhood. 
Everything else is a finger cloud
drifting past the moon.

But I have been craving truthful connections
with what lives in my own backyard,
so I googled them this morning and found,

Spring Peepers are tan or grey or brown frogs, 
no more than one and half inches long that live near water. 
Though rarely seen, they are often heard from March to June
when the males calls out for their mates.
They hibernate in winter under logs
and can survive being frozen.

We have been listening to the sound
of love calling
and the silence of fierce survival.