The small crickets have no idea how soon their world will change, or how drastically. They are buzzing away as though it were still the middle of August. There's surely a lesson in that, and a cliché trope, and a B-. No longer being in school I can afford to ignore all those things and just wait to notice one night that the cricketless silence of autumn has fallen. I wonder if the buzzing in my brain will stop than, too?
Sunday Verse
Incendiary
by Vernon Scannell
That one small boy with a face like pallid cheese
And burnt-out little eyes could make a blaze
As brazen, fierce and huge, as red and gold
And zany yellow as the one that spoiled
Three thousand guineas' worth of property
And crops at Godwin's Farm on Saturday
Is frightening---as fact and metaphor:
An ordinary match intended for
The lighting of a pipe or kitchen fire
Misused may set a whole menagerie
Of flame-fanged tigers roaring hungrily.
And frightening, too, that one small boy should set
The sky on fire and choke the stars to heat
Such skinny limbs and such a little heart
Which would have been content with one warm kiss
Had there been anyone to offer this.
