The next two poems are a matched set,
and were inspired by my daughter who--
when she was four or five--
used to walk through the house singing "Nobody
loves me but the spring cricket."
And I never knew who this spring cricket was
and why our love didn't count, but--
[LAUGHTER]
--if you're a parent, you just have to get with the program.
So these are for her.
"The Spring Cricket Considers the Question of Negritude."
"I was playing my tunes all by myself.
I didn't know anybody else who could play along.
Sure, the tunes were sad, but sweet too,
and wouldn't come until the day gave out.
You know that way the sky has of dangling her last bright wisps?
That's when the ache would bloom inside until I couldn't wait.
I knelt down to scrape myself clean
and didn't care who heard.
Then came the shouts and whistles, the roundup
into jars, a clamber of legs.
Now there were others, tumbled, clouded.
I didn't know their names.
We were a musical lantern, children
slept to our rasping sighs.
And if now and then, one of us shook free
and sang as he climbed to the brim, he would always
fall again, which made them laugh and clap their hands.
At least then, we knew what pleased them,
and where the brink was."
"The Spring Cricket Repudiates his Parable of Negritude."
"Hell, we just climbed.
Reached the lip and fell back, slipped and started up again,
climbed to be climbing, sang to be singing.
It's just what we do.
No one bothered to analyze our blues until everybody involved
was strung out or dead.
To solve everything that was happening
while it was happening would have taken some serious opium.
Seriously, all wisdom is afterthought,
a sort of helpless relief.
So don't go thinking none of this grief belongs to you.
Even if you don't know how it feels to fall,
you can get my drift.
And I, who live it daily have heard that perfect word enough
to know just when to use it, as in, Oh hell, Hell, no.
No, this is hell."