Cricket In The City Poem by Susan Lacovara

All those Nike feet
Pound the black tar street
Busily bundled in bustling herds
Where too many words
Scratch the skyscrapers
Lost in blowing newspapers
From a roadside stand
Crowds demand
More spaces
In a sea of passing faces
Sirens blaring, open airing
Of dirty laundry such the quandary
Of a city on daily parade
The endless cascade
Of rushing to get nowhere quick
Subways thick
With staleness and the paleness
Of proper suited businessmen
Scurrying about in a shout
Of flashing traffic signals
As they wiggle round Times Square
And in a sidewalk crack, there
A displaced cricket
Who thinks it's wicked
For none to hear his symphony made
Of bow drawn legs
Music played
Like that of a meadow
Far, far away
A train clangs,
Climbing to platformed stop
A cop walks his beat
In sweltering heat
Past the naked cowboy
Who strums his guitar
Made into a star
By tourist dollars
The cricket hollars
For the yellow cabs to halt
Cool the circus asphalt
Long enough to hear the glide
Of the songs that slide
From his violin legs
He begs they hear his minuet
For just an instant, they to forget
Overcrowded ambivalence
Serenade them, deliverance
With music box melodic muse
Before they pound their shoes
To the shuffle of the street
Unaware how sweet
The cricket plays....
For free without frenzy of care
Unnoticed but heard in Times Square



*Nike: sneakers, as seen worn by the street pounding people on New York City streets

*Times Square: perhaps the busiest crossroad in the world, the heart of Manhattan..naturally noisy