WEBVTT

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The next two poems
are a matched set,

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and were inspired
by my daughter who--

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when she was four or five--

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used to walk through the
house singing "Nobody

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loves me but the
spring cricket."

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And I never knew who
this spring cricket was

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and why our love
didn't count, but--

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[LAUGHTER]

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--if you're a parent, you just
have to get with the program.

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So these are for her.

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"The Spring Cricket Considers
the Question of Negritude."

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"I was playing my
tunes all by myself.

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I didn't know anybody
else who could play along.

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Sure, the tunes were
sad, but sweet too,

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and wouldn't come
until the day gave out.

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You know that way the sky has of
dangling her last bright wisps?

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That's when the ache would bloom
inside until I couldn't wait.

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I knelt down to
scrape myself clean

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and didn't care who heard.

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Then came the shouts and
whistles, the roundup

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into jars, a clamber of legs.

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Now there were others,
tumbled, clouded.

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I didn't know their names.

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We were a musical
lantern, children

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slept to our rasping sighs.

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And if now and then,
one of us shook free

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and sang as he climbed to
the brim, he would always

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fall again, which made them
laugh and clap their hands.

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At least then, we knew
what pleased them,

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and where the brink was."

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"The Spring Cricket Repudiates
his Parable of Negritude."

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"Hell, we just climbed.

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Reached the lip and fell back,
slipped and started up again,

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climbed to be climbing,
sang to be singing.

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It's just what we do.

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No one bothered to analyze our
blues until everybody involved

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was strung out or dead.

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To solve everything
that was happening

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while it was happening would
have taken some serious opium.

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Seriously, all wisdom
is afterthought,

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a sort of helpless relief.

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So don't go thinking none of
this grief belongs to you.

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Even if you don't know
how it feels to fall,

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you can get my drift.

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And I, who live it daily have
heard that perfect word enough

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to know just when to use it,
as in, Oh hell, Hell, no.

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No, this is hell."