My daughter, who is now a professor in her own right
of the Arizona State.
It's so strange for me to realize that,
but when she was five or four about that age used
to walk around the house proclaiming that nobody loved
her but the spring cricket.
And children have these ways of getting under your skin,
and then you can't--
it was her power.
And we could not figure out who the spring cricket was.
I even couldn't figure out if there were spring crickets
and autumn crickets, or whatever.
And so what does a poet do?
You become the spring cricket, and you talk about them.
So I began writing poems from the spring cricket's point
of view.
And actually with her blessing.
And so here's a couple of them.
And then, I don't think I'm through with them.
I think they're going to be more.
This is the first one that appeared.
It's called 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 round up 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.