Dragons in the Gum Tree Grove

The Caged Cricket

You found a cricket in a cage,
a plastic toy in plastic bamboo.
“How sad,” you said, “to be a bug
imprisoned for another's luck.”
“As bad to be a cockatoo,
or a hamster on a wheeling track,”
I said, “or lambs trapped in a chute.”
“I'm glad the cricket's plastic,” you said,
“prisons make the spirit sick.
I wonder if atoms think they're caught
in molecules, or protons read
the nucleus as a cell.”  “Who knows?
Limits abound.”  You shook your head.
“Then nothing's ever free, I suppose.”

Next Poem:  The Owl's News

Return to the Poem Circle Page

Updated last on:  2001/06/03