Budding
Jianqing Zheng
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After Yasunari Kawabata’s “The Grasshopper and the Bell Cricket”
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Kids are catching bell crickets,
their colorful lanterns are floating
everywhere on the riverbank.
Soon, a boy jumps up shouting,
“Anyone wants a grasshopper?”
Some boys run toward him, but
he keeps shouting until a girl
emerges, murmuring she wants it.
The boy extends his fist to her
who encloses it with both hands.
When the grasshopper appears
between her fingers, she screams
in delight, “Oh, it’s a bell cricket.”
Smiling with a spark in his eyes,
the boy holds up his lantern:
a shine of delight on the girl’s face.
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Jianqing Zheng’s latest poetry collection is entitled Dreaminations (Madville Publishing). He teaches at Mississippi Valley State University.
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Posted in When in Rome: Nov '25 and tagged in #boudin, #poetry, Poetry