A Symphony of Cicadas

At the hush of dusk where the she-oaks sway and shimmer in the heat,
Where red dust curls like whispered smoke aside a traveller’s feet,
There comes a sound both strange and vast, like strings underthe stars,
A rise, a reel, a rhythmic chant that dances through the spars.

No fiddler bows nor flautist breathes to play this pulsing air,
No man could claim the credit for the music quivering there.
It buzzes from trunks and bark and soil, from root and crown and limb,
The ancient choir of cicadas, in chorus, wild and grim.

They slumber long in earthen crypts, beneath the she-oak’s hand,
For seventeen or seven years, they wait below the land.
With eyes like glass and wings like mist, they sleep in muddy gloom,
Then rise with thunder in their throats to greet the world in bloom.

The summer cracks her furnace door, the creek beds gasp and steam,
And out they crawl from sacred soil, still tangled in a dream.
Like pilgrims dressed in armoured shell, they climb the trunks with care,
To split their backs and step anew into the golden air.

The bush begins its symphony, a droning, drumming wave,
A chant of thirst and firelight, of the silence that they brave.
It echoes through the bottle trees, across the sandstone rim,
A lullaby and battle cry that rises, fierce and grim.

No conductor calls the rhythm out, no sheet to guide the tone,
Yet every tree’s an orchestra, each note is all its own.
One voice begins, a subtle chirr, like wind behind the eaves,
Then thousands join in trembling ranks under the burning leaves.

The males cry out for love and fate, their music raw and proud,
While females listen, silent-eyed, within the sonic cloud.
A war of wooing, fast and fierce, their only chance to mate,
For soon the heat will fall away, and close the season’s gate.

A week, perhaps, to live and sing, to sow their blood by stars,
Then fade like notes upon the breeze, or echoes lost in bars.
They die in heaps below the trees, pale ghosts on crimson ground,
Yet in their passing, life begins, still buried, safe and sound.

Their eggs will hatch then soon enough, the nymphs will drop below,
To burrow into dark and wait as years and seasons go.
The fires will rage and floods will come, the bush will sleep and wake,
And still beneath, a thousand hearts in slumber will not break.

My, what strange patience nature keeps! What clock within her chest
Ticks out a tale of waiting long, of sleep instead of rest.
They know not war nor wealth nor woe, nor death by cruel design,
They live to sing and sing to love, and mark the pulse of time.

From city parks to desert sands, from coast to inland plain,
The chorus plays from mountain spine to washed-out windowpane.
The children press their faces close to windows, blinds and screens,
To watch the wings like coloured glass, like dreams from in-between.

The elders nod, for they recall the cycles of the past,
Each song a memory reborn, each summer not the last.
They speak of years the skies were full, when branches seemed to shake,
And how the nights would whine so loud, it kept the farmstead wake.

And even now, with roads and wires and towers stretching high,
The city lights that mask the stars and whitewash out the sky,
Still comes the sound, unbending, pure, unknotted by our needs,
A beating, winged testimony from the songline of the seeds.

And who are we, if not like them?, we wait, we rise, we call,
We seek for love, we find our tune, then yield and lose it all.
For in that losing, life begins, a rhythm passed along,
A measure held by those to come, a silence borne in song.

Henceforth when you stroll amid the tree, or sit through twilight’s haze,
And hear that sound that stirs your chest in deep and cryptic ways,
Know this: it is a symphony, not chaos, not despair,
But nature’s strange and pulsing hymn that rises through the air.

The cicadas sing of more than love, or mating’s brief delight,
They sing of waiting through the dark, of finding voice and light.
They sing of turning earth and ash, of things beyond our ken,
And ask us in their fleeting trill to live, and sing again.

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