Banjo

And after 3 days rain
the frog songs stops

—which had wimped
& bumped loud like a distant

chained-up dog—
and the birds

begin—mockingbird,
wren. O Susanna

don’t you cry fo me
an unthumbed string

of days, dis-
cord. A few toads lie

splat in the road & find
I am counting blessings I

never before spoke.
Down the sky comes

grows the grass up—

I plead with you
—the nerve!—to start

again your whispered
name—let

them frogs gossip on
all night—if they want—

Copyright Credit: Kevin Young, "Banjo" from jelly roll {A BLUES}. Copyright © 2003 by Kevin Young.  Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.