The grove we approach looks dark as a wound
we’ll enter, as the cicadas drone
through leaves with an off-key, faltering hum
that strengthens as it resolves. You are down,
it intones and we are: low, separate from
cicadas that vibrate on limb after limb
in slurred, ragged waves of excitement, flung
by the monumental furnace that drives them.
The wires and caverns of burning life seem
intensely their own, to those of us listening.
The fact is, they don’t know we listen,
don’t care, and don’t say a thing that’s human.
Their sound is a strong and useful change
to us, who believe we are used to change.