Heir to an insect afterlife,
the strange & punctual cicada
saws its way through the evening air;
its shrill, celestial gossip
like a locomotive
steaming to a stop,
whistling down the tree-lined avenues
and cracked sidewalks of childhood…

Mistakenly named for the Biblical plague,
the nymph of the so-called locust
feeding on taproot juices,
grips the bark of the buckeye & climbs
splitting itself wide open;
emerging into the August night
as if to applause
after seventeen years underground

Drumming its blunt stomach under the moon
like some antediluvian king,
the long gray beard of his brooding
hanging like Spanish moss,
it revisits the great noisy work of the earth
reverberating in the shade
on delicately-veined
lace wings…

Come into the world to make love & music,
hoping to escape through a suture in time,
we re-enter the dream, the slipstream
and the immemorial mystery
of the ways of light & water,
letting all the dying
that has to get done
take care of itself.