![\"Debra](\"http:\/\/www.debrafrasier.com\/images\/book_art\/animal_a300.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The Animal That Drank Up Sound<\/b>
\nby William Stafford<\/p>\n
One day across the lake where echoes come now
\nan animal that needed sound came down. He gazed
\nenormously, and instead of making any, he took
\naway from, sound: the lake and all the land
\nwent dumb. A fish that jumped went back like a knife,
\nand the water died. In all the wilderness around he
\ndrained the rustle from the leaves into the mountainside
\nand folded a quilt over the rocks, getting ready
\nto store everything the place had known; he buried\u2014
\nthousands of autumns deep\u2014the noise that had used to come there.<\/p>\n
Then that animal wandered on and began to drink
\nthe sound out of all the valleys\u2014the croak of toads,
\nand all the little shiny noise grass blades make.
\nHe drank till winter, and then looked out one night
\nat the stilled places guaranteed around by frozen
\npeaks and held in the shallow pools of starlight. <\/p>\n
It was finally tall and still, and he stopped on the highest
\nridge, just where the cold sky fell away
\nlike a perpetual curve, and from there he walked on silently,
\nand began to starve.<\/p>\n
When the moon drifted over the night the whole world lay
\njust like the moon, shining back that still
\nsilver, and the moon saw its own animal dead
\non the snow, its dark absorbent paws and quiet
\nmuzzle, and thick, velvet, deep fur.<\/p>\n
After the animal that drank sound died, the world
\nlay still and cold for months, and the moon yearned
\nand explored, letting its dead light float down
\nthe west walls of canyons and then climb its delighted
\nsoundless way up the east side. The moon
\nowned the earth its animal had faithfully explored.
\nThe sun disregarded the life it used to warm.<\/p>\n
But on the north side of a mountain, deep in some rocks,
\na cricket slept. It had been hiding when that animal
\npassed, and as spring came again this cricket waited,
\nafraid to crawl out into the heavy stillness.
\nThink how deep the cricket felt, lost there
\nin such a silence\u2014the grass, the leaves, the water,
\nthe stilled animals all depending on such a little
\nthing. But softly it tried\u2014 “Cricket!” \u2014and back like a river
\nfrom that one act flowed the kind of world we know,
\nfirst whisperings, then moves in the grass and leaves;
\nthe water splashed, and a big night bird screamed.<\/p>\n
It all returned, our precious world with its life and sound,
\nwhere sometimes loud over the hill the moon,
\nwild again, looks for its animal to roam, still,
\ndown out of the hills, any time.
\nBut somewhere a cricket waits.<\/p>\n
It listens now, and practices at night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Animal That Drank Up Sound by William Stafford One day across the lake where echoes come now an animal that needed sound came down. He gazed enormously, and instead of making any, he took away from, sound: the lake and all the land went dumb. A fish that jumped went back like a knife, and the water died. In all the wilderness around he drained the rustle from the leaves into the mountainside and folded a quilt over the rocks, getting ready to store everything the place had known; he buried\u2014 thousands of autumns deep\u2014the noise that had used...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[28],"class_list":["post-1126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-poetrythursday"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1126"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5317,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1126\/revisions\/5317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}