In Response to: Poem for Cicada
graduation, princeton, June 1970
“the locusts sang, and they were singin’ for me
… his head was explodin’ ”
—Bob Dylan
sitting on my behind
thank god sans robe
as lofty admonitions
and four years of
weighty articulations
dissolve in floods of sweat
crescendos and decrescendos
of seventeen-year-old
cicadas
and the shimmering green
shading to shivering purple
foliage