Cicadas

The Front Yard Burial Ground

She sprayed her lawn for killer cicada wasps

not knowing

they burrow into soil

building mounds like moles

where they place corpses

and lay their eggs.

When the eggs hatch, larva feed.

Even though cicadas come

only every seven or thirteen years,

the female wasp finds them,

using her one sting,

turns them on their back,

straddles them

and glides them to their grave.

The Last Thirteenth Year

Our newspaper claims they say “Pharaoh, Pharaoh”

a mating call of the plagues of Egypt coming in sevens or tens

locusts brought on the wind, cover the eye of the land

eating every tree until the Pharaoh admits his sins.

But these come every thirteen years,

teens walking hand-in-hand

under power lines along an abandoned track

climbing to the top of Rose Hill to spin a bottle and

share a first kiss.

Listening to cicadas, their twirling wings like vibrating atoms,

I feel more like a pharaoh than a lover,

letting go of the last thirteenth year

when you walked with me under singing oaks

holding a dog’s leash instead of a hand.