[APPLAUSE]
OK, so let's see what else we got in here that I can give you.
Here's another kind of a narrative poem.
"Pseudacris Crucifer."
The father begins to make the sound a tree frog makes when
he comes with his son and daughter to a pail of tree frogs
for sale in a deep South flea market
just before the last blood of dusk.
A tree frog is called a tree frog
because it chirps like a bird in a tree,
he tells his daughter, while her little brother, barely
four years old, busies himself like a small blues
piper with a brand new birthday harmonica.
A single tree frog can sound like a sleigh bell,
the father says.
Several can sound like a choir of crickets.
Once in high school, as I dissected a frog,
the frog opened its eyes to judge
its deconstruction, its disassembly, my scooping
and poking at its soul.
And the little girl's eyes go wide as the tree frog's eyes.
Some call it the spring peeper.
In Latin, it's called pseudacris crucifer.
False locust, toads with falsettos,
their chimes issuing below the low leaves and petals.
The harmonica playing is so otherworldly the boy
blows with his eyes closed.
Some tree frog species spend most every day underground.
You don't know-- they don't know what sunlight does at dusk.
They are nocturnal insectivores.
No bigger than a green thumb, they are the first frogs
to call in the spring.
They may sound like crickets only because they
eat so many crickets.
Tree frogs mostly sound like birds.
The tree frog overcomes its fear of birds by singing.
The harmonica playing is so bewitching,
the boy gathers a crowd in a flea market in the deep South.
A bird may eat a tree frog, a fox may eat the bird,
a wolf may eat the fox, and the wolf then
may carry varieties of music and cunning in its belly
as it roams the countryside.
A wolf hungers because it cannot feel the good in its body.
The people clap and gather around with fangs and smiles.
The father lifts the son to his shoulders,
so the boy's harmonics hover over varieties of affections,
varieties of bodies with their backs
to a firmament burning and opening.
You can find damn near anything in a flea market, pets, weapons,
flags, farm fresh as well as farm spoiled fruits
and vegetables, varieties of old wardrobes,
a rusty old tin box with old postcards
and old photos of lynchings dusted in the rest of the box.
You can feel it on the tips of your fingers, this rust, which
is almost as brown as the father and the boy on his shoulders,
and the girl making the sound a tree frog makes
in a flea market in the deep South
before the last blood of dusk.
Just before the last blood of dusk.
Just before the dusk.
[CHEER AND APPLAUSE]