Athens, Georgia
February 12, 2015
When morning chill
subsides to day
soft air will trill
to waves of cicada
in rhythmic insistence
suffusing the summer
with resonant tides
traversing the decades
to float an old spirit
outside of its time
where evening shadows
hold an old homestead
with cabin and garden
once carved from the forest
by grandfather’s hand.
Out back in the darkness
young parents and uncles
with aunties and elders
are weaving old stories
conversing again
while tucked in the sun-room
four children are drifting
in cots become lifeboats
through open-screen wonder
on currents of love.
Eternity beckons
as voices are merging
with swells of cicada
from forests departed
and family dispersed.
But listen more closely
within the brief pauses
a new conversation
with children now grown
and grandparents gone.
From faraway darkening
that bleeds through the chasm
we hear our own voices
in timorous rhythms
emerging to life.
Perhaps we shall sing
with the sense of cicada
that time is illusion
the earth is our nursery
summer abides.
