A Crown for Seventeen-Year Cycles
1998
Hear, on the cusp of second millennium
sonic drone of endless septendecim
mating in the trees; this is their moment—
brood color-cast in standard screen ratio,
Kansas brood, pride of the Midwest—hear them
from the comfort of your mother’s full womb.
Your body no bigger than theirs, pebble
in a placenta sea, perhaps you feel
tymbal vibrations more than you listen.
Something writes the song of the cicadas
onto your soul, transcribes their scissor grinds
into standard English until, bug blessed,
you are destined for obsession, live girl
composed of skin, of wings, of want of scream.
2015
Composed despite the want to scream,
this baby entomologist
scans the trees for signs of life, marks
every body by blood-red eyes,
screeching song and screamo chorus.
Battered by legs and abdomens,
the girl indulges in this brood
like all these boys emerged for her,
like all these calls are sung for her
sat below the drooping sweetgum.
She types the bugs odes on her phone.
She odes them because she owes them
everything, all her songs. She’d be
silent sans their buzz in her chest.
2032
Silent city. Buzzing chest
sends the girl towards the prairie,
has her search the growing grain
for signs of cicada life.
She listens for simple songs—
large dorsatus, annuals
boasting yearly rituals
and finds them flying, thriving.
For now, they can mate untouched
by cement, by the threatening
rise of the high-rise buildings.
The harvester revs reaping,
rakes away strains of music.
Only the engine still rings.
2049
Only the engine rings
first, then the reckoning
as teeth and bark and flame
sever sweetgum from roots,
replace yard with plastic
turf-grass, smother bodies
just waking below ground.
The bravest singers press
against white-wire mesh,
bulge through, copper soldiers
nature-driven skyward.
Calls of the persistent
swarm keep sister sated.
Death hasn’t won out yet.
2066
Death still hasn’t won,
but it’s crept closer
on silver windows,
iron, more turf-grass
on reinforced base.
Each neighborhood sings
signs of techno-times.
Dust covers driveways.
No one ever leaves
the pale blue screen light
leaking under doors.
No one questions why
the summer light sears
sings loss it still feels.
2083
Sing little,
sing echo
of summer
remedy,
genes singing
cicada
sing love songs,
sing nature
still standing
some planet
far from here,
sing second
try again.
Hear us. Sing.
2100
Hear
composed
silent.
Only
death
sings.
Hear.
Amanda Trout is a Midwestern US writer with a love for sound, form, and cicadas. Her work has been featured in Pleiades, Barzakh, Roots and Words by Iron Oak Editions, and other publications. She teaches composition and studies poetry at Oklahoma State University, where she also serves as a reader for the Cimarron Review.