Whine as though a pine tree is bowing a broken violin, As though a bandsaw cleaves a thousand thin sheets of titanium; They chime like freight wheels on a Norfolk Southern slowing into town.
But all you ever see is the silence. Husks, glued to the underside of maple leaves. With their nineteen fifties Bakelite lines they'd do just as well hanging from the ceiling of a space museum —
What cicadas leave behind is a kind of crystallized memory; The stubborn detail of, the shape around a life turned
The color of forgotten things: a cold broth of tea & milk in the bottom of a mug. Or skin on an old tin of varnish you have to lift with lineman's pliers. A fly paper that hung thirty years in Bird Cooper's pantry in Brighton.
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... until you hear the chirps of hungry birds.
ReplyDeleteOr find their glittery, hard shelled carcasses on the sidewalk.
ReplyDeleteWhy do you laugh? Change the name and the story is told of you.
ReplyDelete-Horace-
Now I am laughing! I am imagining my lifeless glittering hard shelled carcass on the sidewalk!
DeleteWhen you hear an empty crunch
DeleteUnderfoot, alas! It’s the sound of
Cicadas having the last laugh.
Summer dragonflies
ReplyDeleteWings like cathedral windows
How hot the wind blows!
Cicadas at the End of Summer
ReplyDeleteBY MARTIN WALLS
Whine as though a pine tree is bowing a broken violin,
As though a bandsaw cleaves a thousand thin sheets of
titanium;
They chime like freight wheels on a Norfolk Southern
slowing into town.
But all you ever see is the silence.
Husks, glued to the underside of maple leaves.
With their nineteen fifties Bakelite lines they'd do
just as well hanging from the ceiling of a space
museum —
What cicadas leave behind is a kind of crystallized memory;
The stubborn detail of, the shape around a life turned
The color of forgotten things: a cold broth of tea & milk
in the bottom of a mug.
Or skin on an old tin of varnish you have to lift with
lineman's pliers.
A fly paper that hung thirty years in Bird Cooper's pantry
in Brighton.
Odd and disturbing
ReplyDelete