BURT KIMMELMAN

Cicadas, Mid July

How odd the occasion, the whirring

of the cicadas, surprising once

we start to hear their secret business,

unseen no matter where we look – we

pause in our morning talk, wondering

when they arrived and why the summer’s

unforgiving heat begins with their

advent and later the cool early

evenings settle in with their silence.

Spring, in its false starts with the pushing

through soil and snow of its first flowers,

their small shocks of color, held us in

blossoms and leaves so we finally

let go of the thought that the light and

warmth would ever come to an end, but

the cicadas do their work – no more

twitters of birds, our sadness spun in

the din and the waning of the light.