With all that’s going on in the world is not Donald Trump’s pussy pay-off trial, bloodshed and horror in Gaza, Ukraine’s desperate battle, or even Taylor Swift. It is the coincidental hatch of two broods of periodic cicadas in much of the United States east of the Mississippi. TV news has breathlessly reported on the anticipated event almost nightly for two months, barrels of ink spilled, and billions of electrons wasted. Finally, the northern brood of 17 year cicadas are emerging here in Northern Illinois.
Back in the last century I took notice of them at a summer worship service of the old Congregational Unitarian Church at the rural home of some long-time members. The verse was included in my 2004 poetry collection We Build Temples in the Heart.
One Hot Day in August
We knelt, squatted, sat—
palms down upon the earth
under an oaken vault—
and chanted the prayer of a faraway people
we do not know.
We blessed the earth and its keepers.
While a choir of cicadas sang
psalms down,
psalms down upon us.
their nymphs rested beneath our hands.
Waiting their turn in next year’s chorus.
Who blessed the land? Who kept it?
—Patrick Murfin
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