Where did my Jiminy Cricket go?

The rains had disrupted lives, some lesser so,
and up came an orchestra of crickets through pipes

battling water runoff, grasping slime against the storm,
emerging baptized on to drier shores of her pristine home.

Stridulating in hope for shelter in her territory,
they cowered in the shade, croaking pleas day and night.

She remained insouciant, but fear and worry raged
at the sight of some behind ominous black veil-like wings

and dead eyes gazing at her in the shower, and another edging
towards the bedroom and her trinkets – what if they exploded?

‘No, never’, she yelped, squashing some under rubber sneakers,
scouring the place for more of the uninvited tribe seeking asylum.

Before bed, she read out the tale of the kindly viable Jiminy Cricket
and the errant ignorant Pinocchio, just as an army of ants marched by,

cleansing the unclaimed casualties of her reign of terror on the crickets,
now eerily quiet with the dignity of the dead, and a casual thought

strolled into her mind that the devilish wings were rather translucent
and the eyes - simply complex and different, even iridescent.