Cicada

For David Carson

How beautiful the cicadas’ song
How holy the insect voices
Rise to heaven.

How homely and comforting
The steady trill of their choir
In the dark night.

Yet some say each cicada
Is the restless, reborn soul
Of a dead Poet –

A spendthrift who did not respect
The gift of his muse
But squandered his inspiration.

Till the poems died, nameless,
While waiting to be born
And the silence grew deafening.

How with cicada’s wings
He now fervently delivers
His unuttered poems.

He can never again be silent
Even if no human understands
His heart’s outpouring.

How beautiful the cicada’s song
How purely the insect voices
Rise to heaven. 

by Glenda Cimino

Haiku

wind in the long grass
whispers of forgotten lovers
under the trees.

Both poems are © Glenda Cimino, with thanks, C.