Poem of the Day I

Thoreau and the Crickets
~David Wagoner

He found them bedded in ice, in the frozen puddles
Among reeds and clumps of sedges in the marsh:
House and field crickets lying near the surface
On their sides or upside down, their brittle hind legs
Cocked as if to jump as free as fiddlers
In the final rain before winter. The ice
Had clarified the brown and green shades
Of their chitin and magnified
The thickened radiant veins of the forewings
On which they'd made their music
Those nights when he'd listened, half asleep,
To their creaking, their wise old saws
That told him over and over they were with him
And of him down to the vibrant depths
Of his eardrums and canals and the foundation
Of his house on earth. With his heels and hands
he broke the puddles around them carefully,
Cracking them loose and filling his coat pockets
With fragments like clear glass, holding them hard
As fossils in shale. he would take them home
And learn from them, examine their lost lives
With scales and ruler, tweezers and microscope
He would bring them back to order and pay homage
To all they'd been and left undone. He strode
Briskly and happily through the crusted lanes
And slipped through the paths of town, delighted
To be alive all winter, to be ready
And able to warm their spirits with his own,
But on his doorstep, reaching into his coat,
he lifted out, dripping with snow-melt,
Two hands full of wriggling, resurrected crickets
Crawling over each other, waving and flexing
Antennae and stiff legs to search his palms
For another springtime. For a while, he held them
And watched them wriggle drunkenly
And scrabble in half-death for what they imagined
He had to give, then put them gently
Again into his pockets and carried them
Back through the snow and ice to their cold beds.

from Ploughshares