Cicadas by Ingrid Bruck

Cicadas arrive a month later in the northeast than the southwest. In Texas they are raising mayhem by early July, they have a longer time to deafen all who live nearby with their strident calls than in the northeast where I live. It’s late summer when cicadas hatch in Pennsylvania, climb trees and start making noise. By then, birdsong has gotten quieter, mating and nesting slowed down as birds prepare to migrate and the insect pulse moves to high volume, a fill-in for the missing day-long bird conversations. Cicadas fiddle their wings and make a racket. Loud vibration wells up and down in whining waves,a screech without words that blends together like people toning in meditation.

whirring cicadas
mariachis serenade
outside my window

Ingrid Bruck is wild flower gardener and nature poet. She lives in rural Amish country in Pennsylvania, a landscape that inhabits and inspires much of her writing. Some of current work has appeared in Yellow Chair Review, Three Line Poetry and Leaves of Ink.