Doc sent me outside to get water.
The day was so hot,
the house was so hot.
As I came out the door,
I saw the cloud descending.
It whirred like a thousand engines.
It shifted shape as it came
settling first over Daddy’s wheat.
Grasshoppers,
eating tassles, leaves, stalks.
Then coming closer to the house,
eating Ma’s garden, the fence posts,
the laundry on the line, and then,
the grasshoppers came right over me,
descending on Ma’s apple trees.
I climbed into the trees,
opening scabs on my tender hands,
grasshoppers clinging to me.
I tried beating them away.
But the grasshoppers ate every leaf,
they ate every piece of fruit.
Nothing left but a couple apple cores,
hanging from Ma’s trees.
I couldn’t tell her,
couldn’t bring myself to say
I never had a chance.
Ma died that day
giving birth to my brother.
August 1934