NPM: Ted Kooser "Grasshoppers"

"Grasshoppers" by Ted Kooser
(from Delights & Shadows)

This year they are exactly the size
of a pencil stub my grandfather kept
to mark off the days since rain,

and precisely the color of dust, of the roads
leading back across the dying fields
into the '30s. Walking the cracked line

past the empty barn, the empty silo,
you hear them tinkering with irony,
slapping the grass like drops of rain.