I get this way, this time of year.
Light begins to shift and I will notice
………………that wheel turning.
Cicadas whirring louder, they will know.
They beckon their own dying
………………soon to come.

Come back, I ran ahead. The sunlight is still bold
and I see blue sky through the haze of heavy air and
………………brave cicadas. They leave their little shells some years,
carapaces rattling on the tree trunks. Less than corpses,
………………more than ghosts. I’ve plucked their wings of cellophane
to make my art, scavenged from the undead

who are gone to other places underground
………………to wait for seven years. Late summer is the worst part
of the southern year, when I turn older and begin to welcome dying
vines and fleeing birds and memories of school and change and
wood-smoke, bonfires, sweaters. Empty branches,
………………harvest moon. Hecate, claiming, sacrifice, surrender.

All because of August
and those damned cicadas and the wheel
………………that only I can feel
………………behind me.

– Wren Donovan