by Michael Earl Craig
Gratitude came down
in the form of a golden
grasshopper.
Not golden like a bar of gold
(an ingot)
or golden like honey
or paint on a football helmet.
It was another kind of gold.
This grasshopper
glanced in through the open
widow of a southbound car,
hit the fleeced shoulder of
a sleeping infant and bounced
down onto the floor.
It came to rest beside a potato chip.
The grasshopper sent forth a golden light.
The infant awoke in his car seat,
looked at the grasshopper
and wiggled his feet, his white socks.
It is likely we are completely ignorant
of our role in the universe.
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Michael Earl Craig grew up in Dayton, Ohio, and was educated at Ohio Wesleyan University, the University of Montana, and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
Craig has published four poetry collections — Can You Relax in My House (2002), Yes, Master (2006), Thin Kimono (2010), and Talkativeness (2014) — and the chapbook Jombang Jet.
His work has been included in the anthologies Isn’t It Romantic (2004), Everyman’s Library Poems About Horses (2009), The Best American Poetry (2014), and Poems Across the Big Sky II (2016).
Michael Earl Craig is the current poet laureate of Montana. He lives near Livingston, Montana, where he works as a farrier.
