The cottage on Apple Hill Road was getting a new roof.
the roof only leaks when it rains….
Ladders leaned against every side safely tied off
by the safety supervisor.
I bend to untie knotted shoestrings of fear that
keep me tethered to solid ground.
I boldly step barefoot onto the rung. Fear is banished,
no longer in command.
I will walk the slope of the roof, stand at the peak
in glorious freedom and joy.
From there I will leap to the dark swaying branches
of the oak that sweeps to the sky.
swiftly swiftly now climbing enveloped in the sheltering radiance
of sun drenched leaves and waving ripples of wind and blue,
tendril arms reach to dark limbs, feet find footholds and crevices
that only eagles have known.
toes curl around the top branches outstretched arms grow feathers
head thrown back in victory mouth gulping the liquid drops of air
the sun rays are heat and flames scorching my face
and i dare not look down.
this breadth of view this heaven of angels, of muses, of clarity;
Do Not Fear the angels say each time they meet a mortal.
They know we fear their wings their otherness
their instructions
of impossibility.
but each time we unstrap those shoes of fear (no matter how stylish the heel or brilliantly cunning the color)
and run barefoot on the shards of a cracked life,
God shouts with joy, the angels cheer
and the beast retreats into the ground.
Everywhere i look i see a poem waiting:
the muddy garden shoes by the door waiting
for my feet
to deliver me to a place of peace and solitude
where peppers bow and dance on heavy laden stalks.
Arugula sings as it grows — Taste me Taste me —
and beans swing through their jungle playing
hide and seek with the leaves;
the two flannel shirts shrugged off in haphazard heaps
on the chair in the mudroom
— his and hers — sleeves entangled, plaids clashing,
waiting for him to say (In the cool of the evening)
Have you seen my flannel shirt?
and she will know exactly where it is;
the okra on the counter, cut into symmetrical flowers,
waiting to be made into thick aromatic okra stew.
A friend brought it —
His wife said Don’t bring me any more okra.
I love okra, he grinned.
Maybe i won’t plant so much next year;
the glossy green peppers piled precariously
in the wicker basket — waiting their turn to be
sliced diced and frozen for winter’s
friday night fiestas;
the dark brown just-plowed garden dirt
drinking up the rain
waiting for the creamy garlic cloves
in their smooth purply skins
to spend the winter buried
in the snow-covered earth;
the lime green clock on the kitchen wall
bought at Walmart for $3.99
ticking away the seconds minutes hours
ticking away summer into fall
ticking away seasons into years — waiting
for someone to notice minute and hour hands
colliding with dizzying disorienting
speed.
Once in awhile
God sends us a reminder
that we are human
and God is God.
Every seventeen years Magicicada Septendecim (periodical cicadas or seventeen-year locusts) emerge from the deep mysterious underground. It takes seven to ten days for the adults to shed their exoskeleton and mate. Here in the Southwest Corner of Pennsylvania, this is the year.
Yes. They have emerged.
And this seems a fine time for me to emerge from my own writing cocoon. I’ve designed and redesigned the blog; thought and rethought;, written and rewritten; and the best I’ve come to is, yes, i need to write. And I probably shouldn’t wait seventeen years to restart.
These cicadas just beg to be examined.
In the week that I have had this post in my draft box, I’ve re-written it twice, and renamed it three times. As the cicada plague worsens, so does my attitude towards it. At first it was fascinating, in an ugly, horrifying way. Now it has just become horrifying.
Some of those who study such things predict 1.5 million cicadas per acre. That’s 4.3 million giant ugly bugs that have just gotten their wings on our property alone…Need I say more? With my trusty smasher I walked our buildings this afternoon and killed 178 253 375. That’s three hundred seventy-five less, right? As the days wear on, I reckon between the two of us, we kill 500 per day. And yes, some people eat them.
The experts say Keep Calm and Carry On: the adult cicadas aren’t hungry and it is the larvae who will damage the precious little branches of your fruit trees. But these flowers sure look damaged to me…
These used to be pretty impatiens…
The truth is maybe they aren’t hungry. But they are thirsty, and they latch on to one’s beautiful flowers (that one has just bought for $85 at a nursery–including a gorgeous hanging basket for $30) and drink the water out of them, and the plants die.
It is a beautiful Memorial Day Monday and I’m sitting inside writing this post, because I don’t even want to go outside. Can I truly hibernate in the cottage until mid-July?
Our Winesap apple wrapped up in netting…
We’ve wrapped two of our fruit trees with netting, and then it seemed to us we might be wasting our time; plus we ran out of netting. So I guess we can call it a grand experiment. What troubles us the most is that two of our apple trees had many many little precious apples on them… Lovely little green and red swirly marbles that we were counting before they hatched ripened… And the female cicada’s dream house? A fruit tree branch 3/4 inch in diameter where she makes little slits and lays her eggs.
I am reminded of a plague of locusts of biblical proportions. Floods, hurricanes, plagues — yes, we are humans and God is God. I am like Lot’s wife, not trusting that all will be well, and looking back one last time to get a glimpse of beautifully tended flowers, vegetables, and fruit trees — a landscape that only existed in my April dreams.
Seventeen years. It’s a long time to incubate in the ground. My neighbor told me that the ground most infested is undisturbed ground, especially near trees. There’s a metaphor here too, I’m sure. If you don’t turn over that ground of your soul, if you don’t keep it plowed and ready for seed, it gets infested with stuff that you don’t even know is there until seventeen years later… And then it looks like this:
This is just a sweeping of one corner of the porch. I had three piles this size in the space of a half-hour.
I’ve been reading some odd stuff about these cicadas on the Internet. Our local bakery is roasting them and serving on them on omelettes and making chocolate chip crunch cookies with a roasted, sugared cicada as garnish. I’ll pass, thank you. I don’t think eating insects with red eyes is good for you. Plus, I’ve squished a lot of these things and have seen what’s inside them. Ugh.
There is even a web page called Cicada Mania where you can buy coffee mugs and t-shirts with cicadas emblazoned on them. If any of you want a coffee mug of these bugs, just let me know and I’ll send you some. We have more than our share. I can put some on a t-shirt and sent them to you too, if you’d rather…
And then I read comments like this: Enjoy them… Please don’t kill the cicadas, or let children use them as torture toys. They have waited years and years underground for this brief climax of their lives, when they turn into winged creatures whose joy is sunlight and mating. When the food supply in their bodies runs out, they die. They cannot eat. And by sheer numbers, they provide food for birds, small mammals, reptiles and in death, fertilize the trees…
I’m pretty sure this commenter is a city apartment dweller and her front porch doesn’t look like this:
or her house walls like this:
or her fruit trees like this:
or her front yard tree like this:
Oh, wait — don’t kill the bugs… their joy is singing and mating and sunlight. Tralaa-tralaa….
Bah, Humbug!
And if these photos weren’t ugly and graphic enough, here is a video. It is totally amateurish, but it is taken right outside our front door. When shooting it, I moved about three feet and 360 degrees. The background is the cicadas singing. I’m told the males sing to find a mate. They don’t have to go far…
The plague is supposed to be over by mid-July. By that time, the dead bodies will have rotted, the smell will be gone, and probably the apples too. I’ll keep you posted… In the meantime, no one is invited to the cottage this summer — Not that you’d want to visit after seeing these pictures.
the circle of life 