On a midsummer day, the cicada cries.
I cry, too.
You cry, too.
The sound of a car is heard.
As if forgotten just now,
that sound drifts further away.
It stops.
The cry of the cicada.
We stop, too.
It shines.
This quiet, still moment.
The cicada cries again.
Who are we?
“Mae-mae, mae-mae.”
Noisy cicada
drones in the summer evening.
No one gets to sleep.
Winner Honorable Mention: 1483, Brian Stand (Sponsor) 6/26/26
Embedded and dormant,
they neither wake nor sleep
but defer and endure
until a sun-seeded air
percolates in countless
humming sepulchral lungs.
There is a foretelling,
an imminent rustle of shoveling wings -
the soil erupts,
whirlwinds swarm tree and leaf.
Now begins the cacophony,
the drumbeat of innate necessity.
Wing plates thrum
against chitinous abdomens,
a fretsaw orchestra hollows out
cavities for creation.
Grasping obsessions
become strangleholds of insemination,
then unto death do they pour.
We who sweep away or step upon
their stiffly crinkled corpses,
to our numbed ears comes a solace
as the raucous interlude abruptly ends,
nor do most keep account of the years,
until the next pronouncement
of yet another reincarnation blares forth.
cicadas grow old
their voices fading softly
autumn approaches
annoying buzzing
summer evening soft humming
cicada love song
Awakening early mornings with an eerie sound,
as cicadas start calling, emerging from the ground.
These harmless insects shed their exoskeletons,
leaving evidence of cycle changes for every one.
In their once timely appearance you could have placed stock,
due to their biological alarm clock.
Now with global warming and the earth heating up,
cicadas are coming more frequently to mate and feed on newer stuff.
Changing their long held patterns, navigating cooler courses,
they are moving further north in search of better food choices.
Don't run off to an audiologist my friend, that buzzing
in your ears is just this new cicada trend.
I am no where near
that great Cicada
comback moment.
Much like a comet,
or the invasion of Grenada,
I'll have to watch a YouTube vid
to asertain the gist of it;
why so short lived,
why so loud?
The mating call aroused,
a trillion Magicicada*
live then die enmasse,
and we are blessed
to have witnessed this,
nature's orchestrated symphony
*magicicada: From Ancient Greek mágos, “magician” + Latin cicada.
The male [magicicadas] aggregate in chorus centers and call there to attract mates. Mated females lay eggs in the stems of woody plants. Within two months of the original emergence, the life cycle is complete and the adult cicadas die. Later in that same summer, the eggs hatch and the new nymphs burrow underground to develop for the next 13 or 17 years. ~Wikipedia
It's been a long time since the cicadas rumbled.
History books say 'twas eighteen hundred and three
When war struck the trees where bees sometimes bumbled.
The seventeen and thirteen boys couldn't agree.
The horror of those days can't be told in rhyme,
But that war to end wars, we may again see.
I tell you children that it's once again time.
It's history that tells us and also some math -
It's because thirteen and seventeen are prime.
For the first time since, they're headed down that path
With products and least common multiples the same,
Their hatch cycles will line up in nature's cruel wrath.
In twenty twenty-four bugs will kill and they'll maim.
Do they just need more food to all eat hearty
For them to be happy and peace to proclaim?
Cicada Dreaming was told to Roland Robinson in 1965 by Julia Charles of the Yoocum Yoocum clans from the area around Wollumbin in the headwaters of the Tweed River, Northern NSW and is used with permission.
Tiny Dreamtime children, imprisoned in the earth,
pierce the little tree roots to sip sap beneath the dirt.
For seven years, cicada grubs, as they scratch and dig,
keep getting so much bigger that they pop off their skins.
The final time they’re off and up: up a fence, up a trunk, up a shed.
Kids collect the shells they leave, stuck with claws on curling feet.
Buzz, buzz, buzz: cicada wings brush past my nose.
Their raucous chorus is a non-stop drone.
A thousand bodies cling on sticks and twigs and leaves.
Above my ringing ears their yellow wee rains down me.
Every year they deafen us. The noise is really bad -
crying for their mothers, screaming for their dads.
But, this year there are - none.
I’m surprised that I feel sad.
Where have the mad things gone?
Yellow Mondays, Green Grocers,
Black Princes, Cherry Noses -
Much as they annoy me,
I hope that they’ll be back.
From roses to peonies, from peonies to lovers
im swinging on the bench during the deepest Halloween night like a crazy cicada enamorada wrapped around the body of my beloved like the tangle of a vineyard.
I don’t want to go home tonight, the enchantment of this darkness bewitched me completely.
the fall season has always put me in rest mode, with the radio on and days made of endless dreams, nostalgia for unforgettable discords, eras never experienced
and sensations that scratch the quiet of my thoughts and my delicate skin. Tremors, him and the fire. Drinks, my jeans, unfolded secrets, his cigarette and the end of the fears.
Honeysuckle hazel breeze
Blowing through my mind's trees
Despite outside with winter freeze
In my heart that's blasphemy
Sunny smiles and heated red touch
Stay a while and fall in lavender love
Jack frost lost his sex appeal
Fireplace warm with toasty teal thrill
Summer songs are our escape
The sing a longs so fun to play
Critters that creep we fascinate
Soon they sleep but we stay awake
Cicada song so wild and absurd
In our home where summer's preferred
Eyes surprised by spying song bird
Never denied inside poetic word
Make all of those hearts that are filled with hate,
be forced to hibernate and reappear
after seventeen years..
They could get it right or remain
out of sight in the dirt they could persevere.
Just like a cicada, we would say see you later,
until their hearts became soft and dear..
languorous in heat
cicada sings summer song
distracted by bee
Land of the Cicada
David J Walker
This was the land of the Cicada
bleating wings filling the
air
a sunset summer nights
concert
sweetened with the scent of
lavender-tinged
lilac blooms
fireflies pretend
they are stars
falling from the
night sky
This was the land of the Cicada
that took flight
One night
In my youth
I'm one of these billions out there
hallucinating wanting to be happy
we can't get away from it
the sun pulls us out of bed to fight
until the moon knocks us down to dream again
with the success of the crop
daughter's wedding
the new job at work
vacation
a happiness carved by TV
my dog looks at me disconsolately
he knows I don't smile anymore
yesterday a new flu hit me
now on my cell phone
drug advertisements pop up
things seem unreachable
prostrated on the couch
I hear the cicada that lives in the tree next door
she is happy singing all the time
this is an evil thought
but I'm absolutely sure
that if you put a bigger brain in her head
she would be depressed like us.
Sub Categories
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.