cicadas

Thursday August 25, 2016

Dave Bonta August 25, 2016 2

The cicada chorus ebbs and swells. I notice the big tulip tree has shed all its drought-yellowed leaves from a month ago and is green again.

Dave Bonta July 23, 2016

As the heat builds, the cicadas’ electric drills fall silent one by one. Coneflowers wilt until they look like yellow jellyfish.

Dave Bonta June 9, 2016

A weird cry, like an alarm clock keening for consummation: a lone 17-year cicada, far from the main body of its brood. It stops. It resumes.

Dave Bonta August 31, 2015

In the course of an hour, the only bird calls are from a couple of crows. But there are four kinds of crickets, a cicada, a distant jet.

Dave Bonta August 15, 2015

Hazy and warm. As the sun climbs, the cicada chorus grows, and the field cricket in the garden chirps faster and faster.

Dave Bonta August 9, 2015

Workmen up at the other house: the whine of an annual cicada in the trees alternates with an actual electric saw.

Dave Bonta August 3, 2015 2

A cicada lies on its back on the porch, legs churning the air. I turn it over and the dog gives it a good, close reading with her nose.

Dave Bonta July 13, 2015

Backlit by the sun against the dark woods, a swarm of lekking gnats, their Brownian motion now faster, now slower. An annual cicada’s whine.

Dave Bonta September 5, 2014

It’s hot. At last the annual cicadas sound fully charged. The air is alive with tiny insects in non-intersecting orbits back-lit by the sun.

Dave Bonta August 28, 2014 2

A cicada starts his electric saw and stops. It’s too cold for cicadas. The sky’s a deep blue. A walnut leaf curled like a boat floats down.