high ratchet

High ratchet: the sound of cicadas in our back yard. Once, in my first creative writing class at Houston, I wrote a (bad) poem that included oily blue-black grackles and cicadas, their ratcheting parabola. A couple of years ago, I read a poem somewhere that also used parabola to describe that sound, and I thought yes!
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7KP news: we got our ISBNs from Bowker today! Weeeeehaw!
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Thanks to Brent for the chap exchange. Great poems, buddy. This has rekindled an old idea in my head. . . more details soon. . .
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Kudos to Zachary Harris, whose three poems appear in the new West Branch. I just got a copy today. I heard him read both "Old World Monkey" and "New World Monkey" last summer--good poems! Curiously, the WB web site lists him as "Zachary Harris Willett."
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Our tomato tower toppled last week in a rainstorm. New neighbor propped it gently against a patio chair. When I noticed the felled greenery, I went out in the rain. Neighbor joined me. We agreed that the chair was the best option for the moment. Many green marble-sized tomatoes were scattered across the patio; we picked them up and set them on the table. . . Later that afternoon, I drove a stake into the ground (doo-dah, doo-dah) and tied down one corner of the tottering tomato tower's cagey infrastructure. It stayed upright and has continued to deliver tasty tiny tomatoes, one or two per day. Today: more rain, but just before it arrived, we screwed giant cup hooks into the patio beams and tied down two more cage corners, hopefully securing our vegetal fountain.
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How does one discourage chipmunks from nibbling the garden greenery? They've been devouring the tops of our pepper plants all summer.
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Finally, does anyone out there have any (published or unpublished) poems by the late Randy Brieger? I knew him back in our Houston days, and I know he was circulating a manuscript before his untimely death. . . I contacted Angela Ball, his undergrad mentor, a few years back but we couldn't come up with an address. (For his family, I mean. I am hoping that someone out there can put me in touch with Randy's family.)