Ode To The Cicada

The June trees are lit by the electric sound of the seventeen-year cicada:
Entombed all those years –
I too might make a deafening and shrill return –
To announce the crack of my encasement:
While you till the garden weeds or walk to get the mail,
I would grow wings and fly at your head like a skittering bat –
My eyes—a fire-red or burning orange fueled by summer sun.
From afar, I would hold your attention with my charged company –
An army sent to your inner ear –
A sowing machine of sharp needled sound –
Quilted noise your only cover!

And yet –
My wings like velum paper vaunt the sound of solemnity –
For after June’s chorus comes the dirge of July,
And seventeen years of silence.