Cicadas

I’ve admired how they leave little

shells of self clinging to bark or edges

of jagged leaf, their swarms pacing flight

in packs of years. Imagine, every decade

an upheaval. Farmers would know

of their coming yet could not stop it, the dark

whirring cloud which upon passing

brought a homelessness that beat to bone.

I could hear them the night we spoke, an alarm

of humid warning joining us on the line

like millions of mediators hissing

disapproval. Hungry but not hungrier

than we two, staring down the stalks

of our separate lives, kept apart by a gulf of noise

and time. Like this we’ll always return to take

our fill before burying it again, as if we never asked

any questions or worse, gorged ourselves

on every half-grown, inadequate answer.