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The Cricket and the Grasshopper

By Dan Beachy-Quick b. 1973 Dan Beachy-Quick

The senseless leaf in the fevered hand

Grows hot, near blood-heat, but never grows

Green. Weeks ago the dove’s last cooing strain

Settled silent in the nest to brood slow

Absence from song. The dropped leaf cools

On the uncut grass, supple still, still green,

Twining still these fingers as they listless pull

The tangle straight until the tangle tightens

And the hand is caught, another fallen leaf.

The poetry of the earth never ceases

Ceasing — one blade of grass denies belief

Until its mere thread bears the grasshopper’s

Whole weight, and the black cricket sings unseen,

Desire living in a hole beneath the tangle’s green.

Source: Poetry (February 2013).

Biography

Poet and essayist Dan Beachy-Quick was born in Chicago and raised in Colorado and upstate New York. He was educated at Hamilton College, the University of Denver, and the University of Iowa.

Beachy-Quick's poetry collections include North True South Bright (2003); Mulberry (2006), a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award for poetry; and This Nest, Swift Passerine (2009). He is also the author of A Whaler's Dictionary . . .

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