This is Poetry Moment on WPSU – a weekly program featuring the work of contemporary Pennsylvania poets. Your host is poet and author Marjorie Maddox, a 2023 Monson Arts Fellow, author of more than 20 books, and Professor Emerita of English and Creative Writing at the Lock Haven campus of Commonwealth University.
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Welcome to Poetry Moment.
Watch out! Grasshoppers have transformed into swarming locusts. They fill the sky. They’re coming towards your farm and family. Everything is getting darker. All you can hear is their loud hum. Sound like an apocalyptic movie? In today’s poem, “The Rocky Mountain Locust Surge,” Mark Danowsky recalls the locust plagues of 1874 and 1875. In his poem’s scenario, it’s the insect invaders versus one farmer and his loved ones. What would you do?
Mark Danowsky is Editor-in-Chief of ONE ART: a journal of poetry. He is the author of four poetry books. His latest poetry collection is Meatless (Plan B Press). Take Care is forthcoming from Moon Tide Press in 2025. Mark was born in the suburbs outside Philadelphia, in Montgomery County. He has lived for several years in Philadelphia, Berks County, Lancaster County, and now Delaware County.
According to History.net, in 1874 over 120 billion locusts “ravish[ed] the Great Plains farmland. . .[devouring] ‘everything but the mortgage.’ In this so-called “land of promises,” the stories go, some settlers figuratively and literally lost the shirts off their backs.
Here’s “The Rocky Mountain Locust Surge” by Mark Danowsky
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One story is about the farmer
who just started running
right into the black mass
in an attempt at dispersal.
How far past wits’ end
would you have to be pushed?
He must have become the bull
seeing red. No. Just a human
out of ideas, out of hope—
ready for oblivion.
I'd guess the cloud of locusts
looked like a giant TV
tuned to static.
When he found himself
back on the outside,
they say the locusts had eaten
the clothes right off his body.
Can you see him standing there
in the middle of a dry field
flattened by plague,
naked, except for his boots,
his family looking on
from the windows of their dusty home
wondering why they came here
where promises are unfulfilled?
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This poem first appeared in Gargoyle Magazine #65.
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That was “The Rocky Mountain Locust Surge” by Mark Danowsky. Thanks for listening.
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Listen for Poetry Moment with Marjorie Maddox Mondays during Morning Edition and All Things Considered on WPSU. You can more episodes at wpsu.org/poetrymoment.
Our theme music is by Eric Ian Farmer.
