Ancient instinct warned
it should die, but I thought better of it—
of how I should not crush its head

when it had never bruised my heel,
never whispered in my ear; of how
its only cruelty had been to swallow

a cricket’s bright song into its own black,
satin-scaled silence. So, fallen branch
in hand, I urged this slender living

shadow to my land’s eastern edge—
where the earth is richer than dust or days,
where dark ivy creeps up every tree

and covers a multitude of sins.