Grasses 

Who
would decry
instruments—
when grasses
ever so fragile,
provide strings
stout enough for
insect moods
to glide up and down
in glissandos
of toes along wires
or finger-tips on zithers—
   though
   the mere sounds
   be theirs, not ours—
   theirs, not ours,
   the first inspiration—
   discord 
   without resolution—
who 
would cry
being loved,
when even such tinkling
comes of the loving?
Credit

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on August 19, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets.

About this Poem

“Grasses” was published in Others for 1919: An Anthology of the New Verse (N. L. Brown, 1920).