Welcome back to The Daily Poem, You have a Close Reeds podcast now.

I'm David Kern.

Today's poem is by an American poet and translator named A.E. Stallings.

She was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize just last year for her book, Like, and I've read a poem,

maybe two poems from that book.

Today's poem is from a previous book, a previous collection of poems called Olives. Came out from tricordid books

a couple years ago, and it has a poem called Listening to Peter and the Wolf with Jason Aged

Three. This is how it goes.

Eyes wide open, grinning ear to ear, balanced between the thrill of fear and fear,

he clutches at my skirt to keep me near and will not let me leave him by himself in the living room where Peter and the wolf emerges from the speakers on the shelf.

He likes Peter's jaunty swing of strings, the reedy waddle of the duck, the wings that

flute up in the tree, but still he clings, even though for now it's just the cat picking it

sneaky way through sharp and flat. He isn't frightened of a clarinet and laughs at

grandfather's bluster and bassoon, but keeps his ear out for another tune and the shadowy edge of the

wood and coming soon. Where's the wolf? He asks me every chance he gets, and I explain each

circumstance, though it's not as if he's heard it only once.

You'd think he'd know by now. Deep in the wood or under the tree or sent away for good to the zoo,

I say, and think he's understood. At weary of the question and the classic, I ask him where the

wolf is. With grave logic, he answers me.

The wolf is in the music.

And so it is.

Just then, out of the gloom, the symbol menaces,

...