The tympanal clicks in the hottest hours
counting out a song in another language.
One of mating, and not of love,
that I know well and repeat myself
in the five seven of this poem.
Two Haiku by Basho
Nothing in the cry
of cicadas suggests they
are about to die
Lonely silence,
a single cicada’s cry
sinking into stone
Image: Kobayashi Kiyochika (Japan, 1880), Fireflies at Ochanomizu (via Wikimedia)
Terrestrial stars constellating at the river edge.
The stars shift in the night sky,
but that’s only because we are moving.
This chemical cold fire sends a message –
like us, looking for mate, or prey.
The hot days and cool nights marked
by garden tiger lilies and roadside rogues
and early cherry tomatoes that I pick
and eat here in my shaded chair –
book, pencil, paper, iced tea, these words.
A heat wave week cresting and breaking
here so far away from an ocean
that would feel so cooling and yet
is warming every day and every year.
I feel mid-year changes within and without.
The house of spring is being closed.
The tulips, daffodils and irises have bloomed.
The lawn is a rain-soaked jungle green.
But everyone wants a beach house now.
Sun. Sand. No flowers or grass. Ocean.
