Singing all day and much of the night is exhausting, given
our small physiques. Alas, we need to make our mark 
 
in the world.  To be clear, we are not a parasite a scourge
sent by God to punish the earth.  The ignorant mistake us
 
for locusts.  In my mind, we are troubadours, born of a more
regal empire, more like a cricket in that we are a welcome sign. 
 
Each romantic journey through literature, each stroke of
art shows us to be elevated to nobility.  Like royalty,
 
we can be found in all the best places: location, location,
location.  Try suffering on a hibiscus in Corfu.  I have cousins
 
in China who remember each grunt as the great wall was lifted.
Others prefer a market town in Provence filled with strawberries, 
 
Irises and greet the earth with the satisfaction of knowing winter
is at an end. I realize we are demonized and disliked. But we are
 
more misunderstood than evil, just as forsythia is a sign of Spring,
our song can open a golden flower.   Regardless of how bad
 
the winter, an optimist knows we will wander and daydream
from the beginning and end of time. Which is why
 
in this clear April sunshine, I sip oak-sap, and honor my hamlet
of Kavos by making a big noise, in an otherwise tacky town. 
                        

Cotton mouthed, hung over, I wake up in my sooty dress
somehow ashamed to be seen in the utter waste
 
of daylight. The barbecue with all those mint juleps
on the verandah was intense but I strayed too long on the edge
 
of a glass. I long for a quiet train trestle, wood and paint
chipping off, not those city lights where I am one of millions.
 
I’m not fooled by the low murmurings of the river,
cattails to luxuriate in, but danger in the deep-throated
 
baritone of frogs. Damselflies are entirely self-involved 
and bossy, known to eat out of their own behinds. Never mind, 
 
there’s safety in numbers. A neighbor has an easy split
in a porch screen and as I’m on a tear of wild nights
 
before I die, I’ve set my sights on their cathedral ceiling.
In the sway of tall grasses his youngest cups her hands 
 
around me to pray. I am coveted in the moist chapel of fingers.
Tonight, I’ll hang around until they are all half lidded-drowsy.
 
I’ll skitter down to her favorite blanket where she’ll wish 
upon me like I am the last star falling, the last creature on earth.

I grow old I grow old, I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
											TS Eliot
 
Rumor has it that we are powerful, but left to our own
devices, we aren’t that much. A Goddess thought she tamed
us, but through naming us, we were released
 
from our poison. Words are more heady than life or death,
by swerving a path through imagination, that is release.
Compassion, we have no use for it. Is a man any less
 
dead because of wishing it so? Are we less dangerous 
without sinister intent? Hear what I say, it was a woman
who polluted our stinger with remorse. We are what
 
we are, something you can depend on. That makes us
reliable and comforting, ancient and closer to god
than to the fickle nature of the devil.
 
It would  be foolish to believe that my brothers and I
are earnest in our endeavors for peace. To exist, we rely
on higher blood, both kinds, theirs and ours.