The Man Who Folds Crickets Poem by Jalina Mhyana

If you give him a dollar
he'll climb a palm tree,
whack a frond to the ground
and begin his folding.

These fronds are actually
cricket skin - I never knew
until that trip to Puerto Rico
that all skin must grow
on trees like any other fruit,
and that there are people
who know how to fold it.

He sang as he wove the body,
organic greens twisting,
ducking, weaving, giving
up the deliciousness of sun
for the night songs that would
become its lullaby.

He left one leg long, attached
still to the frond it was birthed of
preventing it from springing
out of his hand before I paid my dollar.

In the town square I freed it,
snipped the ungainly appendage,
an umbilicus that connected
it still to the plant
kingdom it was plucked from
and watched as it practiced being free.