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.