Cicada

                   

        Cicada .... a Time Traveling Poem                                        

                             by Anne Selden Annab 

           

Cicadas - East Coast, Mid-Atlantic

come tunneling out

Brood X -  every 17 years.

The name is as it sounds.

Once when I was a little girl

camping in a pup tent, no tarp,

warm earth where the lawn edge

meets the fence and field beyond.

That summer night, early,

the earth erupted...

It was not fun.

17 years later,

divorced, one child, I was

a single mother working,

living downtown far far away

from the cicadas emerging

and the learned fears of childhood.

Then into my forties, 17 years later,

remarried, safe, respected,

3 almost grown children

and my delight

in hearing the woods hum

as we hike, collecting some

but certainly not all cicada shells-

nymph exoskeletons.

Now into my sixties,

slowing down

out for a country drive

in the passenger seat.

Revisiting childhood haunts.

Here and there, some green trees

with leaves on twig tips brown, flagging,

as the tree fed cicadas prepare

to drop back to earth,

tunnel back down

to feed on roots.

                                                   poem copyright ©2021 Anne Selden Annab