Leafstorm
07-15-2008, 07:53 AM
Do crickets dream?<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
He was looking up at me from my kitchen floor this morning. I set my cup of coffee on the counter and cried. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
And when you woke up this morning, my little visitor, did you reach out with tiny black hands to hold onto a fast fading dream? <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
Did you cry? <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
I wrote a poem recently about a cricket outside my window. I took him for Jiá’s emissary, sent by her to coax me outside, out of my sorrow, so that I might gaze at the full moon, as she was doing so many miles away. I went out into the warm evening and looked up, and in my mind we were together. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
Yesterday her email told me that she’d like to be “just friends”. The phrase woke me up like an insect’s sharp cry in the night. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“You have a dream,” she said, “that want to become writer and artist. I have a dream too, life too short, I need to study and work too hard. I hope you understand.”<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
As a fellow dreamer I do understand. And yes, that is one of my dreams. But there’s also the one in which I’m in love with you, and you with me, and we live together, travel to China and Michigan together, teach each other Mandarin and English, Tai Chi and night club two step, guzheng and painting, and even have a little Chinese-American cricket together. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
Now something soft inside is hurting and I’m grasping at a dream that’s already vanished. A definition of a fool: one that lives in the future – in a dream world – rather than the present. Reality sometimes hides under the refrigerator, yet loudly makes its presence known. How easy it is to ignore. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
I took the cricket back outside to his home and returned to mine. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
Tonight I’ll have a dinner of popcorn and ice cream. I’ll watch Ice Age 2 and laugh at silly Scrat – forever chasing his belovéd acorn, always getting bonked and beat up. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
Tomorrow I’ll get back to work. Writing with tiny black hands grasping for something. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
I’m hoping the writing, like an exoskeleton, will protect the soft parts.
<o:p></o:p>
He was looking up at me from my kitchen floor this morning. I set my cup of coffee on the counter and cried. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
And when you woke up this morning, my little visitor, did you reach out with tiny black hands to hold onto a fast fading dream? <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
Did you cry? <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
I wrote a poem recently about a cricket outside my window. I took him for Jiá’s emissary, sent by her to coax me outside, out of my sorrow, so that I might gaze at the full moon, as she was doing so many miles away. I went out into the warm evening and looked up, and in my mind we were together. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
Yesterday her email told me that she’d like to be “just friends”. The phrase woke me up like an insect’s sharp cry in the night. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
“You have a dream,” she said, “that want to become writer and artist. I have a dream too, life too short, I need to study and work too hard. I hope you understand.”<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
As a fellow dreamer I do understand. And yes, that is one of my dreams. But there’s also the one in which I’m in love with you, and you with me, and we live together, travel to China and Michigan together, teach each other Mandarin and English, Tai Chi and night club two step, guzheng and painting, and even have a little Chinese-American cricket together. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
Now something soft inside is hurting and I’m grasping at a dream that’s already vanished. A definition of a fool: one that lives in the future – in a dream world – rather than the present. Reality sometimes hides under the refrigerator, yet loudly makes its presence known. How easy it is to ignore. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
I took the cricket back outside to his home and returned to mine. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
Tonight I’ll have a dinner of popcorn and ice cream. I’ll watch Ice Age 2 and laugh at silly Scrat – forever chasing his belovéd acorn, always getting bonked and beat up. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
Tomorrow I’ll get back to work. Writing with tiny black hands grasping for something. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
I’m hoping the writing, like an exoskeleton, will protect the soft parts.