I can't hear the grasshoppers any more

I was just now sitting outside, enjoying the first heat of the morning sun and listening to the larks rising over the moors. My wilderness of a garden is filled with butterflies, browsing bees, prowling beetles, hunting wasps and so many kinds of busy insect life that it hums busily right through the day.

One of my favourites is the grasshopper. I've always felt an affinity for the little green acrobat. It dates back to my childhood, when I read the fables of Aesop to find that he compared the grasshopper unfavourably with the ant. The grasshopper sang all day in the sunshine whilst the ant laboured against the coming of the night. And, when summer ended, the ant prospered, and the grasshopper perished, his gay green carapace all grey and lifeless, littering the autumn wind. Dismal morality. I rejected such nonsense and took the grasshopper's side as I did that of the lily of the field. Summer seems endless when you're young, and I'm fortunate still to have my joy of it. It's in my nature to sing in the sunshine.

I have laboured, of course, for I don't have the grasshopper's wonderful lack of anticipation, but, at heart, mine, too, is a purely reactive spirit. Don't you love the way he leaps who knows where to seek adventure or to escape discomfort? In this little voyager there's no thought of the frying pan nor of the fire. Spang! One instant he's here and then, the next, he's there. If you are lucky, and quick, you can see both the take off and the landing. But your luck needs to be phenomenal to witness the actual flight.

So, there I was, sitting in the sunshine, busily thinking of all the things I'm not going to do on this glorious summer's day when - Spang! - a large grasshopper landed right in front of me. I hadn't seen his departure, nor his trajectory, but his landing was with me. It was as if there had been an instant's sub-audible chiming of bells momentarily colouring the air and then, he arrived, glistening with unseen, sparkling dust, a long-limbed Peter Pan.

Like the daft old man I am become, not wanting to disturb him, I whispered, "Well, hello, little fellow." But, judging me harmless, he wasn't disturbed. He went through his post-landing ritual, checking for the presence of all his limbs and his antennae, as if they might have been left behind. Then, he carefully cleaned each of them. For a moment, we sat, both stilled by the sunshine - a carefree moment of our two days brought together by fortuitous accident.

He flexed his thighs, assumed rostrum position, and began to sing.

A chill shadow dulled the garden for me then, just for a moment. It's a small sadness among much laughter, but I can't hear the grasshopper's song anymore. The top end of my hearing has faded with age, and he sings full square in the middle of my lost frequencies.

This is a shadow that clears quickly. One of my labours has been to store up the music I love, and the song of our English grasshopper is safe in my mental catalogue. So, while he performed, voiceless, as in an old silent movie, my mind added the sound-track, and the two of us sang in perfect synchrony.

I lifted my head, squinting at the brightening sky. Yes, I can still hear the larks, and the shrubs, bee-loud, thrum like the afterthought of a wild guitar. There's a savage joy in these things for me.

When I looked down, he was gone. But I still have his song.

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