NaPM April 19 2016

[Todd]

Summer and Winter
 
 
In the days when all creatures still spoke,
when the sun was a bright yellow ball,
and its beams bounced across the meadow
in little spotlights, the grasshopper would play
his fiddle and music would shake
the black-eyed Susans till they danced
under lazy clouds, and the grasshopper
would feel his heart lift like the parasols
of a dandelion clock in the ever summer.
 
Now the ants marched in their gray march,
a never ending line carrying food
across the meadow. They had little use
for music, and even less
for those who played it. The older
ants found that the young would sometimes
stop to listen and fall from the cadence
of steps that had worn this trail
smooth through generations.
 
One day an ant left the line
and said to the grasshopper,
 
“Green will give way to brown and brown
will give way to white, and then what shall you eat?”
 
“Life is more than eating,” said the grasshopper, 
 “more than a line to walk day after day.
If you never live for summer,
who cares if you live at all?”