Cricket in a Grass Cage

I turned on the light and went into the cold room, closing the door behind me.  I opened the sliding closet door and, on my knees, began to take the shoes off the plastic box.  Why, I asked myself, do you keep your writings in a box that is so hard to get to, and whose lid is so hard to open - as I wrestled with the tightly snapped-on plastic.  

I was looking for a poem I wrote in high school.  I remembered most of it, and remembered writing it, how the phrase “cricket in a grass cage,” had just come to mind, and how the words had effortlessly unfolded from there, revealing their story.  I was thinking about how, though the sentiment wasn’t one I had striven to express, it seemed true enough at the time.  And how, though I hadn’t acknowledged it then, the poem was probably influenced by Dylan Thomas’ “Fern Hill,” a poem my mother loved and had shared with me.

The copy that I found was one I had prepared to submit for publication, and I had changed some words from the ones I remembered, and had left out a stanza to make it more taut (so I thought).  But the missing stanza was one that, for me, drove the rhythm and feeling of the poem, and left its strong mark on my memory, so I put it back.  

The poem has the sensibilities of a high school student, but I still like it.

Cricket in a Grass Cage

Before myself, we used to fly

And walk life’s mountain paths

Our step was sure and we were strong

And we could see forever

There was no limit

All we knew was hinder-free

High bouncing or whatever

In a never-time or instant

Life was sweet - we learned to sing its song

In timeless - free and easy - laughter

And in tender caring, tears

With joy and softly knowing, never fears

But slowly or with crashing 

Came myself, and I am here

And time was thrust upon a soul

And ticking limits hold my flight

They measure out the tune

All is chained except the spirit

And I am here

With no free movement very far

With no free will to go or stay

So little to express my being

With only me to say I am.

And so I sing my song

Like a cricket in a grass cage

With all the glory of the meadow

Confined in this precise bamboo.

©Wendy Mulhern
Spring, 1974