I know we are into deep summer
when I hear the cicadas singing
Ever since I was a young girl
on summer holiday
I marveled at the chorus that
ebbed and flowed through the trees
We used to call them locusts
before we knew better
I imagined each summer that
they would eat all the leaves
And the woods would look
stark and bleak and barren
Like a plague in the Bible
But they are just cicadas
And their song is a constant calm
to my weary worries
It pulses through me
centers me to the present
warms my soul
like the heat of the summer sun