August Grasshoppers

Brown spit of a bug

Swaying on a Christmas tree in Kansas,

Crickety legs bunch and jump, springing in 98-degree heat,

missing my hoe by inches.

Battered by hordes of grasshoppers in Biblical proportions,

a plague of dust devils, teasing our toes in rubber thongs.

Orphan and enslaved,

(At least if felt like that to my 11 year old brain)

We hoed those damn Christmas trees in August

in afternoon sun.

sweat , dirt, grasshoppers, blisters.

Instead of a grandma, sharing snapping beans in a rocking chair,

with trips to the river to catch blue gills and catfish,

it was grandparents slaving us to trees.

Was this what my Dad felt like when he was yanked out of school to work the farm in 8^th grade?

I can’t look at those bulging eyes of a grasshopper

and not feel the heat, scalding my shoulders,

or the sweat glazing my face

and greasing my glasses on a slide in gravity.

I hear their raspy legs

the whir of thickened wings,

and shudder at death

of a dad I can’t say I really knew.

 Later,

with my own children by my side,

pulling star thistle thorning our woodlot reserve,

they gleefully chased with coffee cans,

fish bait.

There was a promise in those legs drumming on the coffee can lid.

A promise

Of cool sheltering trees,

Water skipping rocks,

Lines cast

to mark the passage

of fish swimming upstream.

Oh how those grasshoppers danced on the water!

Tugging on the current,

skewered

by hook,

oozing the tobacco juice spit.

Rising to the temptation,

Biting in hunger,

Flashing silver in Oregon sun….

We bathed our ankles in earth spit,

tangled our casts,

roared in glee at each tug.

Trout slayers with grasshopper guts!

The joy of lives,

drumming

with the river’s breath…

The grasshopper plagues

no one knows.

Somewhere the trees have grown past Christmas.

Grandparents are remembered in cemetery fields.

The woodlot’s been sold,

children have grown.

I watch and listen

to summer

in the rubbing of wings…

remembering….