Cicadas cut down the tree of summer.
Leaves haven’t turned, yet the odd one falls from nowhere.
The white bone of the sky begins to emerge from clouds.
That chirring — all those dead poets
at the core of summer — work transformations.
They sing themselves utterly away,
reminding us we are at war with time.

Sixty-six summers chop at the trunk of memory,
reduce the sun to a stump, truth to bone.
There were days in the forest
when cicadas soaked the wind over stone,
and between the lake and their shrill voices
you drowned beneath the weight of both,
unaware you were only half alive.

I have always failed well — that comforts me.
Cicadas in the tree of summer,
your sounds, your songs,
have long eluded me. Denied their perpetuity,
I still try to add my own songs
to the dying tree of my life,
gathering golden grains from the good hours
to nourish myself at the roots of absence.